fifty

Things I Didn't Know I Loved

it's 1962 March 28th

I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train

night is falling

I never knew I liked

night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain

I don't like

comparing nightfall to a bird

I didn't know I loved the earth

can someone who hasn't worked the earth, love it?

I've never worked the earth

it must be my only Platonic love

and here I've loved rivers all this time

whether motionless like this, they curl, skirting the hills

European hills crowned with chateaus

or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see

I know you can't wash in the same river even once

I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see

I know we live slightly longer than a horse, but not nearly as long as a crow

I know this has troubled people before

and will trouble those after me

I know this has been said a thousand times before

and will be said after me

by Nazim Hikmet