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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=468512" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>On Living</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Living is no laughing matter:<br> you must live with great seriousness<br> like a squirrel, for example--<br> I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,<br> I mean living must be your whole occupation.<br>Living is no laughing matter:<br> you must take it seriously,<br> so much so and to such a degree<br> that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,<br>  your back to the wall,<br> or else in a laboratory<br> in your white coat and safety glasses,<br> you can die for people--<br> even for people whose faces you've never seen,<br> even though you know living<br> is the most real, the most beautiful thing.<br> I mean, you must take living so seriously<br> that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees--<br> and not for your children, either,<br> but because although you fear death you don't believe it,<br> because living, I mean, weighs heavier.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">  <br>  II</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let's say you're seriously ill, need surgery--<br>which is to say we might not get<br>  from the white table.<br>Even though it's impossible not to feel sad<br>  about going a little too soon,<br>we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,<br>we'll look out the window to see it's raining,<br>or still wait anxiously<br>  for the latest newscast ...<br>Let's say we're at the front--<br> for something worth fighting for, say.<br>There, in the first offensive, on that very day,<br> we might fall on our face, dead.<br>We'll know this with a curious anger,<br> but we'll still worry ourselves to death<br> about the outcome of the war, which could last years.<br>Let's say we're in prison<br>and close to fifty,<br>and we have eighteen more years, say, <br>  before the iron doors will open.<br>We'll still live with the outside,<br>with its people and animals, struggle and wind--<br>  I mean with the outside beyond the walls.<br>I mean, however and wherever we are,<br> we must live as if we will never die.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>  III</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This earth will grow cold,<br>a star among stars<br> and one of the smallest,<br>a gilded mote on blue velvet--<br> I mean this, our great earth.<br>This earth will grow cold one day,<br>not like a block of ice<br>or a dead cloud even<br>but like an empty walnut it will roll along<br> in pitch-black space ...<br>You must grieve for this right now<br>--you have to feel this sorrow now--<br>for the world must be loved this much<br>  if you're going to say &quot;I lived&quot; ...</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Nazim+Hikmet">Nazim Hikmet</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=468512" data-title="On Living de Nazim Hikmet" data-description="I

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.
Living is no laughing matter:
 you ..."></div>
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