WORLD POETS MAGAZINE

  Ulugbek Street   In Almaty there is a street called ‘Ulugbek’. People were born and grew up there. ‘Cheers to the fact the street was named after you,’ my friends and associates joke. In Almaty there is a street called ‘Ulugbek’. Too few days to sweep up the leaves, if Ulugbek is going to gleam like the street. But the clouds did not abandon the head of this Ulugbek. There is a street in Almaty called ‘Ulugbek’. A cool breeze calls you for a walk. Its mood is as changeable as mine. On some days it gets sultry. Having been given his name, I am close to this stargazer soul – for the two of us, one street’s enough, after all I’m a street poet myself …     Hour Glass I was given a gift: an hourglass filled with sand – the sand drops so quickly fills my eyes, covers everything. That relentless hourglass counts off each second, each minute, each day, each year. And the sands are running down. How much is left in the glass? What price for my destiny? In the blink of an e...

  Love State   The roads... you asked who gave birth to the roads first. You were holding the slope of a life in your hands, A shadow recognizes its owner by its scent, you were holding it. The lilies were soaked outside, It was raining only on the flowers and trees, It was as if death was pressing the shutter of your rain-fed life, You were holding on to their wet dream.   ***   A fire on the stage, the sun in the windows. Extinct volcanoes erupt in words, The growing beard of a forest is graying, Deep caves are waiting to be born in the tunnel of time, The rustle of silk stretches on the stage, The lights on the stage illuminate the words, The distance in the words hangs on the trigger of the roads.   A walking situation for two people in the distance.       Color Of The Age   Expelled, victims are strangled with an age, The homeless, the oppressed are strangled, The magma of time erupts, his conscience strangles, It is choked with a devour...

  Always Here   There is no problem. I am here. I am always here.    I wrote the Song of the Harpist in 2000 BC in Egypt.  I wrote The Odyssey in 800 BC in Ionia.  I wrote the Tao Te Ching in 600 BC in China.  I wrote the Mathnavi i Manavi in the 11th century at Ikonion. I wrote, exiled in Ravenna, the Comedy which Boccaccio called Divine.  I wrote the Woman of Zakynthos,  The Four Quartets  The Kihli  and Manthraspenta.    There is no problem. I am here. I am always here.       Thus Spoke The Muse    Poets are nothing but waves  of the ocean whose name is Spirit.        I Come From   I do not know if it was Ritsos or Homer  who convinced me to enter the Trojan Horse  holding only a sword and a mirror.    I come from the desert,  where the sand is the crush of every form.    I come from the Ursae,  carrying a sack full of st...

  Streets of the Abandoned City   The Street of the Candlemaker runs slant to the river where time is detained in slight tallow bodies, moored up in ragboats awaiting the tide.   The Street of the Illusionist was never there, or so it would have you believe; an empty black bag in a vat full of pitch.   The Street of the Graveyard is lined with books, with symbols and scorings no one can decipher and carvings of cherubs too weighty to fly.   The Street of the Birds is a vault of locked cages, each inhabitant rendered to feather and bone. Wind blusters through keyholes to parody song.   The Street of the Kings wears a crown of eye teeth plucked from the jaws of anonymous dogs. The Street of the Dogs was scratched from the map.       Sleep   The city is old. It pulls furs about itself, hunkers down and draws archetypes  on the insides of its eyelids with chalk:   a staircase stopping to consider if it is going up or down, a bed em...

  Incomprehensibility   Thinking about God you acknowledge His existence you are waiting for the hand yet you complain more and more emptiness around   boundless loneliness with poetic expression flushed - plays guardian angel however embarassment will not open wide the door of understanding   in the numb head - the trapped thought in the heart - longing (longing is mean)   nobody said it to be easy and is not   such blood bubbling arm in arm with expectancy religious hunger without faith deriving from disbelief       Soulless   His soul left him and circulate namelessly superfluous as the body before without eyes and the pulse   the earth sucks the dried mind coldness only fumes after dead love (she could not even die properly) no trace of jealousy no hatred of those dear and those close to you but they live and still cherish love as a means to the goal   this is an ethernal mystery mercy for the bad humiliation for the goo...

  The First Déja Vu   A horse on the pampas and a tree.   A horse swaying with boat tenderness.   A honey horse and two stiff reins.   What? Didn’t you see death? How it galloped?   A wooden horse and a tree split wandering through wastelands.   Then I remembered what I was like: absent, swayed, sad, liquid.   What? Didn’t you see death? How it galloped?   (from Spanish to English translation: Katherine M. Hedeen)       The Drowned Man   I’d like to make it clear that it wasn’t the river but the earth itself where I drowned.   The only river in my memory is a shudder where small things sink even though they never fully disappear.   Sometimes they sink before the river runs past.   And their cries for help always comes too late.     (from Spanish to English translation: Katherine M. Hedeen)     Wonder   Today’s work involves moving a stone from here to there. It’s a heavy rock, more t...

                                                                Poetry,                                                             forgive me for having helped you understand                                                             you’re not made of words only.                                                            Roque Dalton [from "Clandestine Poems"] ...

   leaving ithaca   my presence is but patchwork in a corner of your tapestry neither mystic blue nor royal purple white nor black nor murderous red it has no place in the threadwork that tells your story   i am she indeed but nobody has told you this i left my home for i could not wait did not wish to wait cast once more in the role of unwitting temptation the plum catch bound by custom to entertain all suitors who claimed hospitality as insolent honored guests   he would have left again after an episode of indigestion a pretense of madness secretly stirring to be unmasked or a bout of violence against this party or that all rustlers and raiders like him for that was and remains still the source of their wealth how cunningly he stole and hoodwinked the best they said in the land and so a king but a vassal ever to avarice always waiting for his chance no matter how much he had amassed to answer its call   my occupation while he fought his brawls stabbe...

  The eye of time   The coin of time burns in my hand a metal circle without a face it burns all that I ignore of myself all that no one suspect of me   The coin rolls down reaches your tired feet you take it and smile artlessly   It’s not a dream for you all this you grab the coin and think of my hair of my eyes   Someone’s telling a lie inside my eyes someone hurts my heart within.   (From “Hablar Sombras”/ “To Speak Shadows 2013,             Translation by Mario Licón Cabrera   Vagabond Press, Sidney, 2017)       To say the shadow   To speak from the shadow; be the shadow; the fast flux where darkness grows without body, subjugated. To speak against the shadow of what we’ve said, come back from the shadow of wakefulness; go so high, so deep, timeless that the fierce return won’t be needed. To say the shadow, to say what we’ve left, the remains of voice and sighs, the reckless shadow with no accent n...