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!