ON LIVING
Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example-
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Nazim Hikmet (RAN)
(1902, Selanic - June 3, 1963, Moscow)
Poet, playwright, novelist
THERE MUST BE SOMETHING
Is the sea as beautiful as this every day?
Does the sky look like this all the time?
Is this furniture, this window
always as lovely as this?
No
by God no,
There must be something behind this somewhere.
Orhan Veli Kanik
Translated by Bernard Lewis (1982)
