Translated from Chinese by Ouyang Yu

for my friend, the poet Kanat Omar

As soon as I think of the city, I think of myself

Located in the city, I can’t bypass it, I can’t go without facing it

It’s inside my body, inside my heart, every footstep taken, walking and stopping, stopping to

look backwards

overtaking some or giving way to others, all in the city, in the heart, in the heart of my hearts

I can’t remove certain things from it, like throwing away certain things

Relatives, friends, people known and unknown, colleagues and people I’ve only met once, all in

there, in the city

I can’t bypass it

Getting off the bus, someone is smiling towards someone else, possibly a smile for me, too

Because, in two days, I may accidentally recall the features that send forth spring warmth to the others

The streetlights go out at 11pm, but I may not go out except that I may close my eyes

Another part of the city, like me, may be brightly lit and as noisy

Houses in the city are levels, like threads of thoughts

The entrance may be to one family but there are actually many doors by which to enter

The threshold of my family is high because the previous owner may have spent many years in

prison

and, when coming out of it, may have kept increasing its height by adding a number of wooden

boards

Every time I cross the threshold I recall those things of the past, of the owner who has moved out

and of the days he has spent in prison

I do not know where he is now and whether the suitcase is still there that he took with him when

he left or if he has given it to someone else

On the day of his departure, the suitcase he was holding left a deep impression on me. I imagined

that it wasn’t a suitcase and that

it was a maze as if, with a jarring noise, the stone door would open itself to let countless batsout

of the dark cave

But it’s just an ordinary suitcase and it’s I myself that let my thoughts go astray

One must be close to darkness, so close that one wants to bring out thrusts of darkness even in

broad daylight

For this reason, I am sensitive about words like ‘darkness’ and ‘brightness’. Put simply, I hate

their guts

They make me allergic. They resemble a wound inside my heart

I am only too anxious to smash them to pieces, to have the opportunity of chucking them into the

steel furnace

But there’s nothing I can do as I have to deal with them and live with them as usual

They have a different name: lies

Lies make life smooth and relax people. Yes, you think so, too?

Who says that butterflies are real but the petal-eyes on their wings are fake

(Look at my metaphors)

Lies are not something you could pour out as you sit and sit

They are wisdom, the highest level of thoughts

(Those on high may feel relaxed themselves and, for that reason, they often catch cold)

Those on high may assume that they look at things differently

For example, those on high and in power often cheat

And we on low ground act as if we know nothing but we also cheat them

We cheat each other exactly because we do not hope for a return of yesterdays

Simple as that

The hat on the head is getting bigger, rounder

But not getting out of the zone of wisdom given by God

Such thoughts as now I normally conceal even from myself

Concealment because that is an idea of cloudless childhood

Why do people become cunning and greedy, growing into adulthood?

(When I was a child my father kept saying after he got drunk: cunningness is a stain on human

character)

Why not stop to contain oneself?

Isn’t it that I do not resemble myself, acting like someone else speaking?

While waiting for the bus by the roadside, drinking coffee, I nearly throw up on thinking of these

things

acting as if I had imagined myself as a philosopher

Philosophy is written for human beings

From Socrates, Plato until the present, if wo/mankind has not gone astray

It is because they are vigilant about their rationality

If one can’t hold one’s desire what will be the difference between one and the animals?

In an environment like a zoo, treating oneself like an adult

Is a hell

(It seems I’m inclined towards theology

That won’t do and let’s carry on for radical religious elements may raise their fists or threaten

with suicide bombs, and that is not good

Sometimes people are that crazy

You must have realized the extent of confusion in my head)

How can it not be confusion:

The Talmud, the Bible, and what else?There’s The Koran

The materialists have no other gods than the money or the Holy War

What have we got today except the two extremes?

Like the fragments fallen from the sky imagined by Nietzsche

When he saw the chariot rushing down the street, didn’t he run towards the horse and hold his

head and said: My pitiable brother?

The auntie in retirement next door kept crying all night

The government kicked the retirees and migrants off the housing security list

The good news is that one has not seen a bird of passage for a long time

What is a bird of passage? Time, a metaphor, a symbol or a story?

I say it is creating something out of nothing

A trick played by the bankrupt Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union period, things were so good that it is fucking enough to shout ‘Heil, Hitler’

or ‘Long Live the Party!’

But it isn’t bad now as there is freedom from fears and freedom to make money

Someone stops me on the road and says, ‘Can we go to the mosque together?’

Then go to the war in Syria for a monthly salary of 800 US dollars

Without thinking, I pack him off

Managing to bear it all, I thought of going to fight the war in Ukraine to defend the Russian

territory but those genuine words

‘Although Russia is huge we can’t possibly beat a retreat as Moscow is behind us’

Are such great words

That were being said after the Soviet Union collapsed, cruel of course

Dog only knows if Russians can imagine the iceberg drifting in the ocean of my heart

Although my wife knows it for she says: your heart is not on the left, but on the right

Are there people without hearts?

‘I am Kazakh. I have died thousands of times and have come back alive thousands of times’ but

who said that?

Possibly he doesn’t have a heart or he has a hot head

Why scream like that?

Isn’t it that one is born once as he dies only once?

It must be like that to have a hot head

They always like talking in a victorious tone:

I, oh, I, oh, I am so great…

Why not say the name of a crow that it should have

It’s that crow, a good bird, that one hears can live for thousands of years, for tens of thousands of

years

(not mentioning the fact that it is true that Stalin lived longer than Lenin)

But it’s all nonsense to say that crows keep company with sorcerers and reside with vampires

It is true, though, that there are some who exaggerate and who can’t hold still if they don’t talk

big

When they talk about eagles it is the phoenixes that come out of their mouths

And it won’t do if they don’t talk as there’s the itch

Crows are an example. Because they are black birds, black all over, you keep smearing them

black and adding black to the black

Whereas in fact it’s not that the crows are black it is that the skies as imagined by some have

sinister blackness that is hidden

Crows are not crows, the dark spots are the crows

And, for this reason, the crows are not wrong

Isn’t it the case that they talked about the powers that be as the sun yesterday but feel puzzled today as they can’t find a resounding metaphor? Why?

It’s because they can’t get the name of a crow right that it ought to have

Because they can’t

They can’t go past it, they can’t get rid of the dark clouds overhead and they get today askew

Falling into what Abay described as a vicious circle of self-satisfaction that looks full but that is

actually stupid

Watching the kids playing on the swing in the courtyard

Suddenly, but it’s not suddenly, it snows

Just that ordinary snow! In the infinitely high place, steam turns into water drops

And, in the cold, turns into snowflakes, falling over my head

Just then, a group of black crows comes flying, perching on the white branches of that big elm tree

Translator’s note: Abay Qunanbayuli (10/10/1845 – 6/7/1904), a great thinker, philosopher, Nationalist poet, and founder of the written literature in Kazakh of Kazakhstan, who has produced a large number of poems, prose, long poems and philosophical work in a refined language and with realist methods, trailblazing a new path for Kazakh poetry. He provided a profound analysis of, and made sharp and convincing commentaries on,the realistic life on the steppe of Kazakhstan with exquisite composition and refined language.