Hikmet -- painting with numbers

Living is no laughing matter . . . 

These are words of Turkish poet, playwright, novelist and memoirist Nazim Hikmet (1902-63), who spent much of his life in prison or exile for his political beliefs.  In the following poem by Hikmet we see a portrait that builds from the numbers that characterize the landscape of Ibrahim Balaban's painting.  As you read Hikmet's poem, consider the value of numbers in portraiture.  Though they do not have the textures of color nor the movement of lines, numbers have shapes and edges that may much enrich our seeing. 

   On Ibrahim Balaban's Painting "The Prison Gates"

   Six women wait outside the iron gates,

   five sitting on the earth and one standing;

   eight children wait outside the iron gates --

   they clearly haven't learned to smile.

   Six women wait outside the iron gates

   with patient feet and grief-struck hands;

   eight children wait outside the iron gates,

   the swaddled infants all wide-eyed.

   Six women wait outside the iron gates,

   their hair well-hid;

   eight children wait outside the iron gates --

   one's clasped her hands.

   A guard stands outside the iron gates,

   neither friend nor foe, his watch long, the day hot.

   There is a mule outside the iron gates,

   almost in tears.

   There is a dog outside the iron gates --

   yellow, with a black nose.

   There are green peppers in wood baskets, onions

   and garlic in saddlebags, sacks of coal.

   Six women wait outside the iron gates,

   and inside -- well, there are five hundred men;

   you aren't one of the six women,

   but I am one of the five hundred men.

                                                                28 December 1949

                                                                Bursa Prison

Hikmet's poem was translated from the Turkish by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk; it is found in Poems of Nazim Hikmet (Persea Books, 1994).

Other poems that create pictures by using numbers are found on February 2  (by June Jordan) and January 26 (by Geof Huth).