OPTIMISTIC MAN
“as a child he never plucked the wings off flies
he didn’t tie tin cans to cats’ tails
or lock beetles in matchboxes
or stomp anthills
he grew up
and all those things were done to him
I was at his bedside when he died
he said read me a poem
about the sun and the sea
about nuclear reactors and satellites
about the greatness of humanity “
A poem written by Nazim Hikmet. At first glance, as the title hints the poem associates itself in my brain with the words child, innocence, optimism, growing up, reality and humanity. Words left a bitter taste in my mouth as I read it. I saw a naive child being described, free from the sadism and perverseness of those around him even at that little age. Refusing to harm and disturb the little lives surrounding him just because he had the superior mind and body to do so.
However, as we read just like waking up from a dream in a cold dark room, that naive kid grows up and sticks out his head from that pastel pink sugary childhood to the harsh, cold reality of the world controlled by the system of food chains and maps in which the stronger had the right to disturb the weaker for the mere reason that the later was simply inferior and this act is justified as being the natural way of the world. He had no right to ask for freedom just because he never plucked the wings off flies, his thoughts, words and preferences were plucked as a result of being the prey, leaving him wingless. And he had people poke their business into his, disturb his peace for the enjoyment they seek in seeing the inferior suffer even though he never once tie tin cans to cats’ tails and watched as the cat ran circles around itself desperately with a sick smile on his face. He became a beetle locked in a matchbox and watched through his little ant eyes as his privacy, home and individuality were controlled by those predators with bigger hands and bigger feet in compensation for the small wrecked hearts.
The end of the rough, long parkour presented itself as a hospital bed under dim white lights. The body of the man laid on those white sheets belonged to the naive kid I read in the first lines. He asked to hear about the sun and the sea, about nuclear reactors and satellites. What bonded all four together was that they were a bigger source out there in the universe than the predators he faced throughout his life. The sun however never used its power to burn through its skin and the sea never pulled him deep to drown him. With each reading the poem grows, more and more significant in its humanistic weight, to be a good man and still suffer the world and the greatness of humanity which was truly his own existence, the optimistic man.