I am perfectly happy to have entered the world

I am perfectly happy to have come into the world,
I love its dirt, its light, its bread and its fighting.
Though I know to the inch its size
and that it is plaything to the sun,
the world is large beyond belief to me.
I would have liked
to travel the earth,
to see the fish, the fruit, the stars I do not see.
But my journeys through Europe
have been in writing, in paint;
I have received not a letter
stamped blue in Asia.
I and the grocer my neighbor
are unknown in America.
But no matter -
I have friends and enemies
spanning every mile of the sea
from China to Spain,
from the Cape of Good Hope
to Alaska.
I have never greeted these friends,
but we might die for the same bread,
the same freedoms, the longings.
And these enemies who thirst
for my blood: I thirst for theirs.
My strength:
that I have company in this world.
The earth and its people are not

secrets to my heart
or to my science.
I have washed my brain of questions
and excitements, and entered
my ranks in the big fight,
open and not anxious.
And without this, I am content
neither with you nor with the soil.
Though you have a magic beauty
and the earth is hot and beautiful.

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Fevkalade Memnunum Dünyaya Geldiğime by Nazım Hikmet

Translated September 5, 2020

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