TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN BY BRENDA PORSTER

Silence

 

There were once

the great languages,

the only ones that could be

rolled up on themselves.

And there were once

the great heights where

the sea fell into the distance.

 

Beside one of the bushes

on the cliff, died

a small memory,

stung by a wasp.

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hands in hand

I watch a word

eating on my plate:

love, enclosed 

in the letters, I won’t send.

It is here. I spread it tenderly.

To eat in the night that is coming.

Like mould. 

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

we waited

we waited

for them to open the gates

a quantity of noise 

in this impression

of action

we waited for them to arrive

a flower in their mouths

every petal

a hope that

we hadn’t lost

and at the moment

of meeting

we forgot

to greet them

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I climb 

the chasm

like the plot of an endless story

The stairway

doesn’t reach the air

 

I still swallow ashes

of her bones

 

I thought I was ready

for that leap

in my hand there remained

half a thorn

The other 

is still flowering and

gives no peace

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Moments cut off

in a sequence of revolts

cut off like hands

in the tongue of the dead,

they are still liquid

inside us,

like tears

amputated.

 

The lay heart

wanted

to learn forgiveness 

but it found the prairies

paved and the dead already

buried.

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Also, read A Writer’s Joy and Other Poems by Akhmet Baitursynuly, translated from the Kazakh by Jake Zawlacki, and published in The Antonym

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