The Mailman

from Hungarian travel notes

Whether at dawn or in the middle of the night, 
I've carried people news
—of other people, the world, and my country,
              of trees, the birds and the beasts—
                           in the bag of my heart.
I've been a poet,
                 which is a kind of mailman.
As a child, I wanted to be a mailman,
not via poetry or anything
but literally—a real mail carrier.
In geography books and Jules Verne's novels
my colored pencils drew a thousand different pictures 
                 of the same mailman-Nazim.
Here, I'm driving a dogsled
                           over ice,
canned goods and mail packets
                           glint in the Arctic twilight:
I'm crossing the Bering Strait.
Or here, under the shadow of heavy clouds on the steppe,
I'm handing out mail to soldiers and drinking kefir.
Or here, on the humming asphalt of a big city,
I bring only good news
                                  and hope.
Or I'm in the desert, under the stars, 
a little girl lies burning up with fever,
and there's a knock on the door at midnight: 
"Mailman!"
The little girl opens her big blue eyes:
her father will come home from prison tomorrow. 
I was the one who found that house in the snowstorm 
and gave the neighbor girl the telegram.
As a child, I wanted to be a mailman.
But it's a difficult art in my Turkey. 
In that beautiful country
       a mailman bears all manner of pain in telegrams 
               and line on line of grief in letters.
As a child, I wanted to be a mailman.
I got my wish in Hungary at fifty.
Spring is in my bag,
letters full of the Danube's shimmer,
                                  the twitter of birds,
and the smell of fresh grass—
letters from the children of Budapest
               to children in Moscow.
Heaven is in my bag . . .
One envelope
writes:
"Memet,
Nazim Hikmet's son,
                        Turkey."
Back in Moscow I'll deliver the letters
to their addresses one by one.
Only Memet's letter I can't deliver
or even send.
Nazim's son,
highwaymen block the roads—
                                  your letter can't get through.

May 1954