Daniel Weissbort. 07.06.06<\/p>\n
Congratulations on your upcoming anniversary and my very best wishes.<\/p>\n
My wife Valentina Polukhina, a noted Brodsky scholar, loves your poetry and tells me that she sees a lot of Brodsky in it: the way you have integrated philosophical insights, the destiny of your metaphors.<\/p>\n
I liked your poetry from the start, when I read some poems in Almaty. I was particularly impressed be the irony, allowing your poetry to be all-inclusive, with apparent casualness, although it is also clear that you are a master of prosody.<\/p>\n
I have attempted to retranslate a few poems and append them. They are not yet finished and I wpuld appreciate your comments. I have noted one problem, and look forward to your response.<\/p>\n
However, if you wish to use them anywhere, please feel free. I look forward to further collaboration with you and I am delighted that we met on my alas too brief visit to Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n
With my very best wishes to you,<\/p>\n
And warm regards to your wife and daughter,<\/p>\n
Daniel.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Poems by Auezkhan Kodar<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Letter to Nowhere<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to write a letter, if only to shake off this mood.
\nI\u2019m deceiving the muses, but they\u2019ll not mind.
\nEven if the calendar has all its pages ripped out,
\nIn the garden, apples and plumes abound.<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
No garden my calendar, stripped by my hand.
\nSo, it\u2019ll be autumn! Everything stays the same!
\nThe changing colours and days no longer disturb.
\nI don\u2019t expect any good news today.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Wandering, I\u2019ll signal the errant star.
\nLabyrinthed in the consciousness is the gardener, in bloom?
\nOn thins shaky earth, I am Abay\u2019s surreal bricks
\nToo crowded the universe, at home too much room.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Either time has reared up, compressing space,
\nOr the roads have strayed, leading only to Sodom.
\nBut grasping at all, bruised by my forefathers silence
\nI\u2019ll not find that niche, in it my forgotten home.<\/p>\n
\nI laugh at everything, and helplessly shed tears;
\nCall this a trap, misfortune, destiny.
\nI\u2019m no match for myself, living by guesswork,
\nTill some chance encounter, it could be with me!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Note: Abay Kunanbay (1845-1904), founders of modern Kazakh poetry, he wrot: \u201cYou are like a brick (childs building block) in the worlds building: \/\/ Find your niche and establish yourself there\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong> In those days, scions of the Saks, And even Washington, I guess, They cram books, journals, making notes, And so there are some who surmise He was a khan, I \u2013 his gofer, For a bottle that weighed more And there in some homely den, <\/p>\n Note: Zhumatai zhakipbayev (1945-1990), lyric love poet, post-modernist, a friend of the poet\u2019s. He regarded himself as a descendent of Genghis Khan (Kagan).<\/p>\n Diels, translator into German of pre-Socratic philosophy. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the newly erected buildings of Moscow<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n In the bottomless pit of the town, \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Night is falling. Sad! Again, no consummation.<\/p>\n A pile of books on the table, an agglomeration.<\/p>\n Outside the poplars cleave the mica-dark.<\/p>\n Smudges, yellow walls presage disaster.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I came to this house where old lives falter.<\/p>\n With their now insubstantial medals and orders,<\/p>\n The age has chipped idly away at their faces<\/p>\n Which like the mica of slit eyes pales,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Trenched with wrinkles, hiding shame and grief.<\/p>\n That grip its shoulders, sagging for relief,<\/p>\n Clumsily moulded by a hard, Bolshevik hand,<\/p>\n The age hurled them into the assault that knoll just beyond.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The age has stripped away hope, names, family pride,<\/p>\n For the littlest thing flung them aside,<\/p>\n And now they are looking for some respite.<\/p>\n The institutional gruel, masticate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The age has shaken them off with a twitch of the reins.<\/p>\n Wretches, they aren\u2019t used to a life without chains.<\/p>\n And whenever I\u2019ve sortied, as it were, on duty detail,<\/p>\n In the huge room they\u2019re ensconced in tattered chairs.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I came to this house, as if there were no other,<\/p>\n This exile to Bedlam, myself a stranger.<\/p>\n Who knows his place is not among the gods.<\/p>\n These old men, no worse than my own parental lot!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Miss Nil<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n You, girl or old woman?<\/p>\n Noseless,<\/p>\n Or big of nose?<\/p>\n Or perhaps you are simply the air here?<\/p>\n Why do you play hide-and-seek with me?<\/p>\n Are you my past or present?<\/p>\n A strip of felt is the fleshless flesh of existence, \/\/\/ Felt?<\/p>\n Yours has a soul.<\/p>\n And its just that I\u2019m loosing.<\/p>\n I change into felt.<\/p>\n Save me, Miss Nil, if you can?<\/p>\n Actually, though, it\u2019s myself saving you.<\/p>\n I can conjure up your image from non0existence.<\/p>\n I can, you sorcerer, bewitched,<\/p>\n You remedy against dumbness.<\/p>\n Since I speak for both,<\/p>\n And you can listen.<\/p>\n No small thing?<\/p>\n I am a classic of minimalism,<\/p>\n I love everything, beyond death and dumbness.<\/p>\n But then the body too. It is silent and worthless<\/p>\n And I particularly love the body.<\/p>\n Because it is you too.<\/p>\n Your body speaks, with all its bits and pieces,<\/p>\n Curves, secret haunts.<\/p>\n It speaks louder than words,<\/p>\n And I am its captive,<\/p>\n A Gulliver, at once large and small,<\/p>\n Small, because you are too large for me.<\/p>\n Large, because you are too small for me.<\/p>\n Take it from me, I\u2019m instable,<\/p>\n But there\u2019s only one remedy your voice,<\/p>\n The sole music that makes sense to me.<\/p>\n Like Scheherezad who hangs on to life as long as she talks,<\/p>\n Not flowers but thousands of little ears I\u2019ll give you,<\/p>\n Petals of attention,<\/p>\n Which is inexhaustible, while I\u2019m alive.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Totally sagacious Miss Nil<\/p>\n Has entered my life<\/p>\n Since, when I have changed my glasses every day,<\/p>\n Not finding a right lens.<\/p>\n She insists the white is best.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s no need for other tints,<\/p>\n Since they but multiply temptations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At night, her voice is scarcely audible<\/p>\n And instead of shoulders what I grab is space.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I argue with someone<\/p>\n Till my nape aches,<\/p>\n She strews my head with ash<\/p>\n And leads me into a wilderness,<\/p>\n Where dervish, forgotten by god and the people,<\/p>\n Merges with the landscape.<\/p>\n And the bodies of wolf cubs are strewn,<\/p>\n felled by hunger.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Wild-eyed Miss Nil<\/p>\n Walks on spiky heels,<\/p>\n Leaving a trail of punch marks<\/p>\n On the virgin asphalt papyrus.<\/p>\n But who needs this endless dossier,<\/p>\n With neither letters nor hieroglyphs?<\/p>\n One has to register the disappearance of the text.<\/p>\n Nothing to interpret,<\/p>\n The game of meanings annulled<\/p>\n Beneath Miss Nil heels.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Miss Nil, o, Lady mine,<\/p>\n Like a red vixen, hiding in autumn.<\/p>\n Sky and memory<\/p>\n Or more to the point, the impossibility of remembering, of grasping.<\/p>\n The weight of impotent thought,<\/p>\n Compulsory complicity<\/p>\n With the realm of phony effects.<\/p>\n I may be the one inclined<\/p>\n To excessive affectations.<\/p>\n And my gilfriend\u2019s called Zero,<\/p>\n Being without essence,<\/p>\n On long legs,<\/p>\n Going nowhere.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m the best radish in the world!<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m the best radish in the world!<\/p>\n A contemporary feminist.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t need anything extra:<\/p>\n Instead of a black man, a chocolate slab,<\/p>\n Instead of a hubby, a decent bank account,<\/p>\n Instead of a close friend, a lesbian pal,<\/p>\n Instead of a heart, a calculator,<\/p>\n Instead of a lover, a dear little vibrator.<\/p>\n The only problem is I\u2019m a cry-baby,<\/p>\n Although maybe it\u2019s not me but the dachshund.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I don\u2019t remember love<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t remember love.<\/p>\n I do remember waiting though,<\/p>\n The plunging of waitings blind foal within,<\/p>\n Fettered by craziness and faith.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The voice of the Ancient Turk<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I was with Tengri; where is that God, my sublime god?<\/p>\n You\u2019re not sublime, if you do not rule from above,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I had a khan, I remember, My Khan? Where?<\/p>\n Without ruler, faith, the land\u2019s not there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Once was a whole world; where has my world gone?<\/p>\n Once I was an idol, now I am naked and alone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I did not close my eye at night; all was lost.<\/p>\n Where now are you, north, south, west and east!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I made them bow their heads, now I am well cursed,<\/p>\n I brought many to their knees, sowing fear at least.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Or, perhaps, heavens grace has cast me aside,<\/p>\n Punished, like some evil spirit, for forgetting our side,<\/p>\n I swear, I was frightened out of my wits!<\/p>\n How now make merry, ignoring grief?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019ve had enough! Get out of my way!<\/p>\n I\u2019m a Turk, and cannot be diverted from my faith!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m a Turk, who entered the steppes to lick his wounds!<\/p>\n I want to exist, pitying those who no longer do!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But there\u2019s little sense even in life, if you waver.<\/p>\n In this life I\u2019m no slave, but a king-player!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m a Turk, who shool the worls in his rage,<\/p>\n I claimes power, even before I was born into this age.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My banners streamed, where Euphratus and Tigris lie,<\/p>\n It was I invented all those war-games, I!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Time and space I kept on a tight rein forever,<\/p>\n Ruled over everything that lives, everywhere!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But tell me where I\u2019ve gone wrong? Was I a fool<\/p>\n To strap heaven and hell to my saddle?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The distances challenged me with their stirring inebriation,<\/p>\n And the gods held their tongue, whatever the nation<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yes, I am old, but my temper is hot and young,<\/p>\n Since I have seen much and have never been wrong!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So listen to the predictions of this old khan;<\/p>\n Do not wait, dear, if I seem to be going I remain!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019ll yet take to the field, raising the dust,<\/p>\n In imitation all who are brave, bold, and must<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Know I am hungry but not greedy, So, learn!<\/p>\n If the world has done enmity, with it I\u2019ll have done!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Note: Tengri is a sky god<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Daniel Weissbort. 07.06.06 Congratulations on your upcoming anniversary and my very best wishes. My wife Valentina Polukhina, a noted Brodsky<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamyr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamyr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamyr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamyr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamyr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tamyr.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tamyr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamyr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tamyr.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNon-transient Principle<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nThey try to tell me, man, you are
\nNot longer living in the USSR.
\nKazakhstans now a power in its own right,
\nMeaning, we\u2019ve our currency, our pride.<\/p>\n
\nWe kept the ancient world awe-struck.
\nAnd now nomad self-esteem
\nIs echoed in London and Paree<\/p>\n
\nDeems us worthy of respect.
\nCan it be overdone, this mix,
\nFrom Derrida to sour milk?<\/p>\n
\nBut, me, I call myself a poet,
\nAlthough they clamour that I am
\nJust Russian-speaking Kazakh man,<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019m negligible, really undersized,
\nEven I told myself quite high
\nRaising cups to Zhumatai.<\/p>\n
\nSide by side on tattered sofas.
\nPoets flowed hither in a mass.
\nSeeking the masters sage advice.<\/p>\n
\nThan a dumb-bell, we donated peaks galore.
\nThe accepted me with enthusiasm
\nIn their avant-gardist battalion,<\/p>\n
\nPot and pilav turned me on,
\nTrying to make sense of what Diels wrote,
\nHeraclitus my real mate.<\/p>\n
\nHeraclitus is the cryptic Greek philosopher. 500 BC<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019m the last glimmer of truth,
\nWith each autumn leaf
\nI lose myself,
\nBattered by buildings,
\nBy solitude.
\nEverything here is taken care of
\nIndividually, in its own right,
\nEverything flees everything:
\nShadows flee houses,
\nReflections flee the shimmer of hoardings,
\nPeople.
\nPeople flee people,
\nOnly the trees
\nlet their limp leaves fall,
\nBut hang on to their immobility.
\nIn the subway there\u2019s an awful crush,
\nLining up to file into the\u00a0 capital\u2019s maw:
\nHopeless faces by the score.<\/p>\n
\n
\nIn the sanatorium for Veterans<\/strong><\/p>\n