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
small as a 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
were made by writing, by drawing;
I have received not a letter
with a blue stamp from Asia;
I and my neighbor the grocer
are unknown in America.
But no matter:
I have friends and enemies
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 would die for the same bread,
for the same freedoms and longings.
And these enemies who would thirst
for my blood: I thirst for theirs.
My strength:
that I have company in this great world.
The earth and its people are not secret

to my heart or to my science.
I have washed my brain

of questions and excitements,

and entered my ranks in the big fight,
feeling open and not anxious.
And without this fight, 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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