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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=468510" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Letters From A Man In Solitary</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=468510" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">1<br>I carved your name on my watchband<br>with my fingernail.<br>Where I am, you know,<br>I don't have a pearl-handled jackknife<br>(they won't give me anything sharp)<br> or a plane tree with its head in the clouds.<br>Trees may grow in the yard,<br>but I'm not allowed<br>  to see the sky overhead...<br>How many others are in this place?<br>I don't know.<br>I'm alone far from them,<br>they're all together far from me.<br>To talk anyone besides myself <br>  is forbidden.<br>So I talk to myself.<br>But I find my conversation so boring,<br> my dear wife, that I sing songs.<br>And what do you know,<br>that awful, always off-key voice of mine<br> touches me so<br>  that my heart breaks.<br>And just like the barefoot orphan<br> lost in the snow<br>in those old sad stories, my heart<br>-- with moist blue eyes <br>and a little red runny rose --<br> wants to snuggle up in your arms.<br>It doesn't make me blush<br> that right now<br>  I'm this weak,<br>  this selfish,<br>  this human simply.<br>No doubt my state can be explained<br>physiologically, psychologically, etc.<br>Or maybe it's<br> this barred window,<br> this earthen jug,<br>  these four walls,<br> which for months have kept me from hearing<br> another human voice.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=468510" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It's five o'clock, my dear.<br>Outside,<br> with its dryness,<br>  eerie whispers,<br>   mud roof,<br>and lame, skinny horse<br> standing motionless in infinity<br>-- I mean, it's enough to drive the man inside crazy with grief --<br>outside, with all its machinery and all its art,<br>a plains night comes down red on treeless space.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=468510" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Again today, night will fall in no time.<br>A light will circle the lame, skinny horse.<br>And the treeless space, in this hopeless landscape<br>stretched out before me like the body of a hard man,<br>will suddenly be filled with stars.<br>We'll reach the inevitable end once more,<br>which is to say the stage is set<br>again today for an elaborate nostalgia.<br>Me,<br>the man inside,<br>once more I'll exhibit my customary talent,<br>and singing an old-fashioned lament<br>in the reedy voice of my childhood,<br>once more, by God, it will crush my unhappy heart<br>to hear you inside my head,<br>so far<br>away, as if I were watching you<br>  in a smoky, broken mirror...</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=468510" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">2<br>It's spring outside, my dear wife, spring.<br>Outside on the plain, suddenly the smell<br>of fresh earth, birds singing, etc.<br>It's spring, my dear wife,<br>the plain outside sparkles...<br>And inside the bed comes alive with bugs,<br>  the water jug no longer freezes,<br>and in the morning sun floods the concrete...<br>The sun--<br>every day till noon now<br>it comes and goes<br>from me, flashing off<br>  and on...<br>And as the day turns to afternoon, shadows climb the walls,<br>the glass of the barred window catches fire,<br>  and it's night outside,<br>  a cloudless spring night...<br>And inside this is spring's darkest hour.<br>In short, the demon called freedom,<br>with its glittering scales and fiery eyes,<br>possesses the man inside<br>  especially in spring...<br>I know this from experience, my dear wife,<br>  from experience...</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=468510" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">3<br>Sunday today.<br>Today they took me out in the sun for the first time.<br>And I just stood there, struck for the first time in my life<br>  by how far away the sky is,<br>  how blue<br>  and how wide.<br>Then I respectfully sat down on the earth.<br>I leaned back against the wall.<br>For a moment no trap to fall into,<br>no struggle, no freedom, no wife.<br>Only earth, sun, and me...<br>I am happy.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=468510" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Nazim+Hikmet">Nazim Hikmet</a></strong></div>