translated from Russian by Olga Mexina

Xinjiang,

why can’t we spend our life together?

Maybe because we have forgotten you,

Xinjiang,

my home.

You are nothing –

you are not my homeland.

You are just a text –

on the board in soggy chalk.

You exist only because you are traced on maps.

You are nothing –

Laozi selling clothing in a store –

his wife breeding ducks.

You are a shadow on a busy street –

that’s why I have forgotten you,

Xinjiang.

Communism is your heaven –

Darwin, Duchamp, and Gerhard, too.

In the name of heavenly communism,

you must scribble your name on paper a thousand times.

Tiananmen, who said you were more valuable than Tibet?

Maybe, Hai Zi† died for this and became India under the wheels.

Xinjiang, poor Xinjiang, when did you become a dove?

Maybe you were a dove in your past life, too,

and now became Xinjiang, became black soil, maybe

Mao Zedong swallowed you in childhood.

Xinjiang, oh how I want to come back to you, but as a child, or

when I become you in the future life –

when I become soil, when I become crows, and then

the crows will keep flying above me, and

my childhood years will keep running through me, and

remembering how I, myself, chased those crows –

I will wonder about my past life,

Xinjiang.

Clouding the sky, the crows fly and become a rainbow.

And now Xinjiang becomes a crow, flying away

like Buddha’s reflection peeled from water…

Xinjiang – a camp.

Xinjiang – a Muslim Pioneer.

Maybe we were wrong to be born to miss you, to forget you,

Xinjiang.

†† Hai Zi is the pen name of Zha Haisheng, one of the key figures of the New Culture Movement in the end of the XX century. During his lifetime, he was also one of the Misty Poets. Hai Zi threw himself under a train at the age of 25. Today, his texts are part of the school curriculum, and his books are published at home and abroad. Hai Zi’s body of work does not exceed 200 poems.