Before answering this question, I would define, or rather put myself within the frames of a Kazakhstani author. This is necessary in the first place because I am me, and then goes everything else. For my mother, I am a son, for my wife a husband, for my reader — a poet. I think that the most important thing for a person is to be a noun. So, to my mother I am a good (or any other adjective) son, to my wife I am a faithful husband, to the reader I am either bad or good writer. The reader will not think about my nationality, he will think about the poems, if, of course, they will be to his or her liking. 

For example, I admire Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf. He writes, "Man designs for himself a garden with a hundred kinds of trees, a thousand kinds of flowers, a hundred kinds of fruit and vegetables." It's a beautiful image. I don't say German writer Herman Hesse, I just say Herman Hesse. Kobo Abe writes, " Year after year students tumble along like the waters of a river. They flow away, and only the teacher is left behind, like some deeply buried rock at the bottom of the current." To compare teachers to rocks and students to passing waters is cruel and beautiful. And here I'm not talking about Japanese writer Kobo Abe.  

But are there those for whom I am not just a poet, but a Kazakhstani author? Not for a Russian speaker and not for my compatriot. I will be a Kazakhstani author for a third person, for a translator or for the reader of these translations. And so, what can I say to this world as a Kazakhstani author? Is there anything to say at all. I'm a Kazakh. I will say with confidence that I am a Kazakh, for the proof of this fact will be the line in my passport and the cut of my eyes on my face. I am a Kazakh who thinks and speaks not Kazakh, but Russian. And it's not about the circumstances, it's about my choice. Yes, in part I am a lost nomad of the Russian language, and as a rule, anyone who has lost their way must surely recognize their footprints and follow them back home, to the beginning of their journey, to look at their life as a personal history, to take a new road. But I am not going back. I am used to the space of the Russian language, the walls of which are covered with poems by a hundred poets and writers. I got used to that air. 

I have learned that it is important to see the distance between letters because it is always the same; if it is not the same, it is not a word but a sentence. This minor emptiness within the word is the beginning of thought. T (air) a (air) b (air) l (air) e. The next distance is between words. It is larger and can be heard. Each person has their word and it is their name. And the name is a shell with a kind of emptiness inside, an emptiness necessary for the first thought. 

And all of this seems to be in a space that is foreign to me. I used to feel ashamed of my ignorance of my native language (not everyday speech, but literary), but today I am aware that the space of language does not go beyond space as such. That is to say, we shouldn't attach much importance to it. If we paint the walls of our apartment, this does not mean that the walls of the flight of steps outside should be shabby and colorless. It doesn't have to be that way. We should be looking for balanced space. Roughly speaking, if my apartment is painted green and my neighbor's blue, it means my apartment is painted green and my neighbor's blue, and the color of the shared flight of steps does not have to be turquoise blue. Its being clean will suffice. We modern people are able to catch and hold the balance of space, while the other, equally important dimension becomes the exact opposite in the context of my conversation. I'm talking about the balance of time. I'm talking about impossibility. Time is like horses, rushing god-knows-where, only for the sake of rushing, and when some miracle of art appears on the way of this herd, one part of the herd will fall into the abyss of the moment unwillingly, by inertia, and another part will not understand what is happening because of the dense steppe dust in the air. Or maybe the time is nothing like horses, but tall cold marble statues without any images (disfigured) and love. It doesn't matter. We will still treat the clock as one of the conveniences that man has invented. Time is a chair. Time is a cup of morning coffee. 

And yet, in spite of wars and disease, the smooth quiet art of letters has always found this balance to keep a man walking, for men are rope walkers of tongues. To walk does not mean only to step forward, but also to speak and to observe. A good poem is eternity, and to eternity we are always close, one has to feel themselves, their skin, this delicate border, which is easy to cross. All it takes is to open one’s eyes.

What else can I say to this world? I'll say it again — anything, but will they listen to me, and if they do, will they get me right? Will they mistake my voice for a steppe tulip and my throat for a Chinese glass vase? Will they understand that my collarbones can not only be the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, but also the hilt of a tight Turkic bow. Will they be able to feel the tingle of each arrow in the silent quiver? I don't know. Boris Poplavsky, in his article "Among Doubts and Obviousness," observed, "One does not write for oneself or for the public. One writes for friends. Art is a private letter sent at random to unknown friends, a kind of protest against the separation of lovers in space and time. This is why there are as few true readers as there are few true friends. That's why every real reader could be a friend and, what is more, would like to be one. And this is what I would say to my friend.

Today I was looking at a tree whose branches had been sawn off at a height of two meters. One of the branches, cut down at the base, never touched the ground. It was holding on to the rest of the tree, like a person holding on to another person. Not pulling, but holding. It is an accident, but I am so willing to give my entire self to such accidents. So, a person exploring the cosmos sometimes stops thinking and starts enjoying the stars.