#olympics protest

[goneahead]

Day 9 - Uighur Poetry

“Don’t think of crying if the news says I have died,

Instead say that I am free now,

From the cold, from hunger,

From thirst;

From the hardship of identity.

Take one rock from your heart;

Grow lighter.

~~Hendan (Muyesser Abdulehed)

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Day 10 - Uighur Poetry

Traces

We were children when we set out on this journey;

Now our grandchildren ride horses.

We were just a few when we set out on this arduous journey;

Now we're a large caravan leaving traces in the desert.

We leave our traces scattered in desert dunes' valleys

Where many of our heroes lie buried in sandy graves.

But don't say they were abandoned: amid the cedars

their resting places are decorated by springtime flowers!

We left the tracks, the station ... the crowds recede in the distance;

The wind blows, the sand swirls, but here our indelible trace remains.

The caravan continues, we and our horses become thin,

But our great-grand-children will one day rediscover those traces.

~~Abdurehim Otkur, trans Michael Burch

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Day 7 - Uighur Poetry

WINDSTORM

In ancient blood books

the valleys dragged by warhorses’ tails

and their pitiful cries

are called the wind.

Land

in the end

is made not of earth

but by piecing together

torn

scattered

incomplete maps.

~~ Ghojimuhemmed Muhemmed

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Day 11 - Uighur Poetry

Phone Call

A phone call makes the heart tremble

The vexing wind swoops

like an ancient Indian dance

This was a day passed

inside a whirlwind

A phone call from the last century

connects to a simple “Hello?”

An intermezzo from the dusky elm’s trunk

fans the spirit lamp into a bonfire

while on a mattress

amidst an armful of hair

a beautiful woman tosses and turns

In her mind she kisses the voice

In her mind she sees the daybreak

The man on the phone

with his flair for invention

describes

the march

of an army of ghosts

A phone call makes the heart tremble

A fistful of white wool cast on the fire

She intends to see the dance

Darning her socks

she intends to await her call forever

And the witch cat of legend

jangles a ring of keys

~~Tahir Hamut, trans. Joshua Freeman

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Uighur Poem - Day 5

Ürümchi

A city.

Inside the dead ice

its significance removed

by a cold wind that remains from long ago. Soaked to the bone

a reflection of stars on the water;

I saw sobbing in broad daylight

where steam seeped out from underground.

A city—

A repeated, chaotic story, but, I am removed from it. Even

on a sunny day long years ago,

when a frail girl disappeared from this city, fearing love.

She didn’t want to understand

the Uyghur words “I love you!”

A city,

as exhausted as I am;

A city,

which abandoned the spring and autumn; A city,

Fading away in the fog.

~~ Tahir Hamut Izgil

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Day 15 - Uighur Poetry

Only When We Start Moving Apart

I trade places with you sometimes

and catch sight of you hurrying

by the wind where I walk

You get mixed up with me too sometimes

and feel me bounding like a deer through the daytime

in the night forests where you walk

Sometimes we run into each other

and speak for ages

but we have no mouths to move

no eyes to see

not even

a single part to our bodies

Only

when we start moving apart

does the sharp smell of fear from our place make us yearn

and at the same time

a secret sound from the bell that arose there

takes our hard dreams

and eases them constantly.

~~ Osmanjan Muhemmed Pas’an

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Day 16 - Uighur Poetry

Tahir Hamut Izgil, trans Joshua Freeman

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Day 4 - Uighur Poetry