That's How It Goes

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That's How It Goes is a poem by Nazim Hikmet proposed for Poets in Prison.

Transcript

That's How It Goes
                      Nazim Hikmet [handwritten in biro]

Am in the middle of a spreading light,
my hands inspired, the world beautiful.
        Cannot stop looking at trees:
        they're so hopeful and so green.
A sunny pathway stretches beyond the mulberries,
I stand before the window in the prison hospital,
        cannot smell the smell of medicine:
        somewhere carnations must be in bloom.
That's how it goes, my friend.
The problem is not falling a captive,
it's how to avoid surrender.


                                (Bursa Prison, 1948)