MOTHER TONGUE
Or when they ask you: ‘How many languages do you speak?’
When inspiration comes to me
and each word burns as if on fire,
suddenly I know all words, speaking
in tongues, even to birds – to the snow itself,
as it flashes past me like a blue shadow.
My love, don’t argue with me right now —
a flash of inspiration and I subdue the storm.
I understand all feeling —
Petrarch inclining to Laura,
Byron in the rustle of the garden.
My verses rise with the flowers,
in tune with the Russian oak forests:
Rossini’s music is created
from the birds in the sky –
I can magic his music into words.
I translate from all the languages of the earth.
Can comprehend the heart and soul,
I seek to grasp the forest’s rustling,
the smoke rising falteringly over bonfires –
all will gain in me the living word.
I will give language to the forest and mountain valleys.
With the strength of words I can smash metal.
Like the night, like the very cores of the high stars,
and I understand the soul of someone close to me,
and the bright mind of a stranger.
I understand the movements of pure rivers,
and the bush in flame.
I possess all languages of the world
with my heart,
but I respond to the world – in Kazakh.
source: https://thehighwindowpress.com/2019/09/20/contemporary-kazakh-poetry/
date of publication: unknown, translated by belinda cooke
biobibliographical note: hailing from kazakhstan, kulash akhmetova (b. 1946) is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry.