One for My Sweet August, Sleeping in a Green Wooden House Far Away

New Year's Eve
Nazim Hikmet

The snow falling hard through the night
sparkled in the starlight.
There is a house on a city street,
a wooden house so far away.

The child sleeping on the pillow
is plump and blond - my son.
There are no guests, no one.
Poor Istanbul out the window.

Shrill whistles screamed outside.
Loneliness feels like a prison.
Munever closed her book
and softly cried.

There is a house on a street in a city,
a wooden house so far away.
the snow falling hard through the night
sparkled in the starlight.

____________
FROM ~ Poems of Nazim Hikmet (Revised & Expanded). Trans. Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk, Persea Books, 2002 - at page 178.