Thursday, August 25, 2011

For Those Who Scoff at Heels and Sneaks

Nazim Hikmet in 1931

ON SHIRTS, PANTS, CLOTH CAPS AND FELT HATS

If there are those
who'd call
me
"an enemy
of a clean shirt,"
they should see a picture of my great teacher,
The master of masters, Marx, pawned
his jacket,
and he ate maybe one meal every four days;
yet
his awesome beard
cascaded
down a spotless
snow-white
starched shirt ...
And since when did pressed pants get the death sentence?
Wise guys
should read our history here, too:
"In 1848, as bullets parted his hair,
he'd wear
pants of genuine English wool
in true English style,
creased and waxed
à l'anglaise -
the greatest of men, Engels ...
When Valdimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin stood
like a fire-breathing giant on the barricades,
he wore a collar
and a tie as well ..."
As for me
who's just another proletarian poet
--Marxist-Leninst consciousness, thirty kilos of bones,
seven liters of blood,
a couple kilometers
of blood vessels,
muscles, flesh, skin and nerves,
the cloth cap on my head
doesn't tell
what's in it
any more than my only felt hat
makes me a tool
of the past that's passing ...
But
if I wear a cloth cap
six days a week
it's so that once a week
when I'm out with my girl
I can wear
clean
my only felt hat ...
Except
why don't I have two felt hats?
What do you say, master?
Am I lazy?
No!
To bind pages twelve hours a day,
to stand on my feet
till I drop,
is hard work ...
Am I totally stupid?
No!
For instance,
I could hardly be
as backward
as Mr. So-and-So ...
Am I a fool?
Well,
not
completely ...
Maybe a bit careless ...
But all the time
the real reason is that
I'm a proletarian,
brother,
a proletarian!
And I'll own two felt hats
- two million -
only when,
like every proletarian,
I own - we own-
the textile mills of Barcelona-Habik-Mosan-Manchester!
And if n-o-o-o-o-o-t,
NOT!

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