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The Book

“Send me books with happy endings”

— Nazim Hikmet

 

The traveler, at last, finds lodging for the night.

The wholesome blondy hero punches villains.

The peasant looks at trees

and latches up the barn

upon the last page

of the books

with happy endings.

The aforementioned constellations drip into silence,

onto windows shut, eyelashes closing.

 

… In chapter one, the trees

lean mutely on a window,

and the sick cry like the birds in hospitals that sleep.

Some roman-fleuves conclude in daylight.

The scientist makes all clear, having found predictability.

That traveler

disappears behind a hill,

the others meet at lunchtime.

The economy grows stout,

the sociologist grows free from doubt.

Chic automobiles

glint by trendy bars.

All wars are over. Generations spring up.

The man-to-woman ratio has evened out.

Blond men elaborate the difference

between the good and evil.

At midday sharp, all trees give shade to peasants.

All airplanes

return to ground, safe and sound.

All captains

clearly behold, land ho!

Fools smarten up and liars cease to lie.

The villain fails again, predictably unkind.

… In chapter one, if someone screams blue murder,

it matters no more by chapter thirty.

Compulsive sex and social positivism,

nice epigraphs from sonnets, villanelles, canzoni,

semi-detective plot known as life.

… Oh, send me those books with happy endings!

 

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Editor’s Note on “The Book”

In “Optimism,” an oft-quoted poem by the oft-imprisoned Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963), the great Turkish poet wrote, “I write poems / they don’t get published / but they will // I’m waiting for a letter with good news / maybe it will arrive the day I die /  but it will come for sure.” After spending 15 years in a Turkish jail for his socialist inflected writing, Hikmet took refuge in Moscow where he later died. “Personally, I would have chosen a different place for exile than Moscow,” said the droll Joseph Brodsky in 1987; he had long admired Hikmet’s innovations and wrote a book about him. In 1960, as an unpublished 20-year old poet, Brodsky wrote “The Book,” an early poem inspired by — one could say modeled on — Hikmet’s poem “Even So Optimism,” an ode to hope written in a Turkish prison some time between 1946 and 1949.  “Even So Optimism” starts with a request: “Brother, send me books with happy endings,” and is followed by examples of such felicities — when surgeries go well, the blind can see, planes land safely, and captains see land on the horizon. Brodsky’s poem responds to Hikmet, echoing his sentiments, or so it seems at first. But Brodsky’s attitude, departing sharply from Hikmet’s, darkens into sarcasm about a regime’s vision and promise of social prosperity.

Photo above: Iosif Brodskiy, photographed by his father, Alexandr Brodskiy, on the balcony of their apartment in Leningrad in 1958.