If half my heart is here,

half of it is in China, doctor,

in the army streaming

toward the Yellow River.

 

And, every morning, doctor,

every morning my heart

is shot by a firing squad in Greece.

 

And, when the prisoners have fallen asleep

and abandoned the infirmary

my heart is in a dilapidated villa in Camlica.

Every night,

doctor.

 

And, after ten years,

all I have to offer my poor people

is a single apple, doctor,

one red apple:

my heart.

 

It’s not arteriosclerosis, or nicotine, or prison

but this, my sweet doctor, this

has caused my angina pectoris.

 

I watch the night through the bars

and despite the squeezing in my chest

my heart still beats with the most distant stars.

 

Translated by Deniz Perin

As you will read in the short bio below, Hikmet was a political dissident, often arrested. I was not familiar with his references to the army and Yellow River, the firing squad in Greece or Camlica. The details were not important; it was the love of his people that rose above the specifics. That love was the pain that broke his heart.

The comparison of his heart to a red apple was powerful and led me down pathways such as the apple in Eden that symbolized man’s fall from the bliss of paradise into the pain of earthly life – although the biblical allusion may not have been one he endorsed. His heart continued to beat with the most distant stars seems to imply that its rhythm and its love will continue eternally.

Nâzım Hikmet (1902 – 1963) was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, director and memoirist. Described as a “romantic Communist”, he was acclaimed for the “lyrical flow of his statements”. He was repeatedly arrested for his political beliefs and spent much of his adult life in prison or in exile. His poetry has been translated into more than 50 languages.