Mavi Boncuk Translation | March 2014"So children are spared and even enjoy candies"
Mavi Boncuk |
Little Girl
It is me knocking doors
Doors one by one
Unseen to your eyes
Invisible are the dead ones
I died in Hiroshima
Almost ten years ago
Yet a seven year old girl
Do not grow the dead children
My hair was in flames first
My eyes burned and charred
I became a handful of ashes
Ashes blowing in the air
(I want nothing for myself
child that burns like paper cannot eat candies)
Knocking on your door...
Aunt, uncle, sign my petition...
So children are spared
and even enjoy candy
1956
By Nazim Hikmet[1]
Mavi Boncuk Translation | March 2014
Kız Çocuğu
Kapıları çalan benim
Kapıları birer birer
Gözünüze görünemem
Göze görünmez ölüler
Hiroşima'da öleli
Oluyor bir on yıl kadar
Yedi yaşında bir kızım
Büyümez ölü çocuklar
Saçlarım tutuştu önce
Gözlerim yandı kavruldu
Bir avuç kül oluverdim
külüm havaya savruldu
(Benim sizden kendim için hiçbir şey istediğim yok
Şeker bile yiyemez ki, kâat gibi yanan çocuk)
Çalıyorum kapınızı...
Teyze, Amca, bir imza ver...
Çocuklar öldürülmesin
Şeker de yiyebilsinler
[1] Nâzım Hikmet Ran (15 January 1902 – 3 June 1963),] commonly known as Nâzım Hikmet, was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist and memoirist. He was acclaimed for the "lyrical flow of his statements". Described as a "romantic communist" and "romantic revolutionary", he was repeatedly arrested for his political beliefs and spent much of his adult life in prison or in exile.
Ran's poem Kız Çocuğu (The Little Girl) conveys a plea for peace from a seven-year-old girl, ten years after she has perished in the atomic bomb attack at Hiroshima. It has achieved popularity as an anti-war message and has been performed as a song by a number of singers and musicians both in Turkey and worldwide; it is also known in English by various other titles, including I come and Stand at Every Door, I Unseen and Hiroshima Girl.
Turkish Zülfü Livaneli has performed a version of the original Turkish poem on Nazım Türküsü, which was later sung in Turkish by Joan Baez. Fazıl Say included the poem in his Nazım oratorio in Turkish. Greek Manos Loizos composed settings of some of Ran's poems, adapted in Greek by the poet Yiannis Ritsos. They are included in the 1983 disc Grammata stin agapimeni (Letters to the beloved one).