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Microcosm
« on: 2002-11-29 10:06:31 » |
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While reading Walter's post on Cosmology, trying to figure out what is going on with the expansion of the Universe and Einstein's cosmological constant, I remembered a Greek song of the 70's based on a poem by Nazim Hikmet, a Turkish poet.
I Googled trying different guesses at how that poem should be in English, and here it was!
http://merlot.stat.uconn.edu/~majumdar/hikmet%20page.html
The poem may seem to be warping the perspective, but that's just the way poems complete the perspective.
Nazim Hikmet
Microcosm
When the starlight flowing into my eye like a golden drop
Pierced the darkness
of space
for the first time,
there wasn't one single eye on the earth
looking into the sky . . .
The stars were old,
the earth was a child.
...
The stars are far from us
but so very far
so very far . . .
Our world is small among the stars
but so very small
so very small . . .
...
And Asia
is one fifth of the world,
And India
is a country in Asia,
Calcutta is a city in India
Banerjee is a man in Calcutta . . .
...
And I am bringing you the news:
In India
In the city of Calcutta
they stopped on his way
A man who was walking
and they chained him.
...
And I don't bother anymore
to lift my head toward the bright skies.
If the stars are far,
if the earth is small
I don't care at all
I don't mind . . .
...
I want you to know that I find
more astonishing
more powerful
more mysterious and gigantic
...
THIS MAN
stopped on his way
and chained.
This is a fragment from an epic on the life and death of the Indian revolutionary, Banerjee, published in 1934.
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