Nâzım Hikmet, photographed by Hans-Joachim Koch at the IV German Writers’ Congress, January 1956, in East Berlin / Wikipedia

They take the pages and burn the ink,
But the words—oh, the words—
Are fire in our hearts,
Grains of dust in the wind.

You cannot shut the mouths of the pages,
No matter how deep you bury the books.
Each line will grow wild,
A vine on the edge of your silence.

They cut the hands that hold the pen,
But the ink seeps through their fingers—
A flood of ideas,
A tide of the unspeakable.

Do you think you can stop the voices,
By locking the covers,
By tearing the bindings?
The stories will escape—
Like birds that never learned to be caged.

In every forbidden word,
There is a revolution waiting,
A spark that will ignite
When no one’s looking.

The pages will find their way to the people,
And the people will find their way to freedom.
Banned books
Are the only books that truly live.

Translation from the Turkish