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Latif Halmat
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Latif Halmat was born 1947 in Kifri in Southern Kurdistan. Latif is working as a journalist and a writer. He has published several collections of poetry. Some of the collections are: God and our little city (1970), Facing a rebirth (1973), The girl's hair is my tent in summer and winter (1977), The white storm (1978), The letters that my mother does not read (1979), and Finished and unfinished poems (1979). Latif Halmat has also written drama. He belongs to the younger generation of Kurdish poets who made their debut during the 1970s.
Grave And Gun
Suddenly electricity was restored
The film resumed
Men were making guns
Women were shedding tears
Then the lights went off again
Perhaps the men are digging graves now
The women are wearing black.
Sulaymani 2/9/98
The Poem Which Ends, Ends Not
Stones feel neither happiness nor sadness
they do not hate nor love any one
stones do not have hearts to fall in love
neither do they have hands to write letters and poems to their lovers
neither do they fantasise about pursuing them from street to street
stones do not have feet to run away
when the guards go to arrest them.
they do not have mothers to weep for them when they die
they do not have fathers to discipline them
when they mibehave
they do not have a specific country
to sacrifice themselves for;
wherever they happen to be
they find a place to rest
and stick to it firmly
stones never remember their past
nor feel nostalgic about it
for otherwise stones would once have written a poem or a letter
In spite of all that
our forefathers said
"Stones are weighty in their own places"
So are human beings.
This age is the age of empty and decorated words
it is the age of fake and begging poets
it is the age of the commercialisation of thought, faith, mind and heart
it is the age of free death, individually and collectively
at the turnabout of every street
death is waiting
wherever you least expect
death is your guard and in your service
This age is the age of confusion and complication
every word is curtailed by hundreds of automatic and
electronic tricks
to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie
let us learn to discriminate between
the good and the bad
let us love Truth more than ice-cream,
hair-claps, necklaces and kisses.
Nazim Hikmet Talks With Humanity
When I was born, sorrows were as normal
as the wind;
death as normal as stones and shadows
hapinnes, just like
the cigarettes and matches at petrol stations,
was forbidden.
Silence was a favourite medal
on the breast of any coward poet.
words were knives seeking
the throat of their utterers.
Then came I and set fire
to the roots of fear
and sowed the clouds of love
on the winds of the seasons.
In the country of hunger and drought
I made my poetry the river of perfumes
and cursed a century
in which poets are caught, from fear,
in the traps of gold and money.
and birds are caught, from hunger,
in various traps and snares.
On the mountains, in the plains and valleys
I cried:
O my hungry homeland
I love you and I love you
here I am ploughing this land
with my eyelashes
turning it into farms and orchards
which grow red flowers and beautiful poems
for the children of the coming world
a world of freedom, love and peace.
