testing

from the article:

Ego Sum

Neither mother of Pearl’s complexion, nor locks of gold Shall you see, like finery, adorning my frame; neither sapphire’s light, celestial and pure, trapped and shining, in the pit of my eyes

With the toasted skin of a sun-tanned moor, with the dark eyes of fatal blackness, from Ancón to dark green skirts I was born before a sonorous Pacific sea.

I am a son of sea…because in my soul There are, like upon waves, nights of calm, and indefinable, nameless rages

an urgency to fight with myself, when in recondite grief, I sink into the abyss thinking I am only sea, cut into the shape of a man

from the article:

Nine Monsters

And, unfortunately, pain grows in the world all the time, grows, thirty minutes every second, step by step, and the nature of pain, is pain twice over and the condition of martyrdom, carnivorous, voracious, it’s pain twice over and the function of the purest herb, pain twice, over, and the good of being, to hurt us twice over.

Never, kin of mine, humankind, was there ever so much pain, in the chest, on the lapels, inside the purse, in the cup, in the butcher shop, in the arithmetic! Never so much painful affection, Never has so far hit so close, Never fire, ever played better dead, bitter cold! Never, Mr. Minister of Health, was health more deadly nor did the migraine steal so much foresight from the forehead! And the furniture, in its basket-casket cabinet, pain, in the heart, in its basket-casket cabinet, pain, the lizard, in its basket-casket cabinet, pain.

Despair grows, humankind, kin of mine, faster than the machine, ten machines at a time, and it grows with Rousseau’s red beef, with our beards; evil grows for unknown reasons and becomes a flood of its own juices, with its own mud and cloud of brick! It inverts the suffering positions, puts on a show wherein liquid humor rises vertically from the pavement the eye is seen, this ear is heard, and this ear tolls nine times on the hour of lightning and laughter, on the hour of wheat, nine songs sing soprano on the hour of weeping, nine hummed hymns on the hour of hunger, and nine thunders and nine whips, minus one scream.

Pain gets a hold of us, kin of mine, humankind, by the scruff, by the profile, drives us crazy in the cinemas, nails us to the gramophone, un-nails us from the bed, falls perpendicularly, atop our tickets, atop our letters; and it’s terrible to suffer, one can pray… For it ends up being that from pain, some are born, some grow, some die, and some who are born but do not die, and some who are neither born nor buried (the majority). And it also ends up being that from suffering, I am grieved to the top of my head, and even more to just below my ankle from seeing bread, crucified, the turnip blood-soaked, crying, the onion, most grain ground down, to flour, so throw dust in the salt, as water flees and in the wine, an ecce-homo, so pale is the snow, beneath a sunburnt sun!

How then, kin of mine, humankind, not to say that I can’t and I can’t with all the bushels and baskets of cabinet-caskets, with so many minutes, with so many lizards and so many inversions, so very far and so very bad this thirst for thirst! Mr. Minister of Health: what to do? Ah! Unfortunately, humankind, There is, kin of mine, a lot to do.

from the article:

Why I Am Silent About The Lament
By: Abdullah Al-Baradouni (trans. Threa Almontaser)

They tell me my silence is about lamentation. I tell them the howling is ugly.

يقولون لي مالي صمتّ عن الرّثاء فقلت لهم ان العويل قبي

Poetry is only for life and I felt like singing, not howling.

وما الشعر الاّ للحياة وانّي شعرتُ اغنّي ما شعرت انوح

How do I call the dead now that between us are hushed dirt and grave? I am surrounded by mute soil and a mausoleum.

وكيف انادي ميّتاً حال بينه وبيني ترابٌ صامت وضريح

Howling is only for widows and I am not like a widow who wails on the silent casket.

وما النّواحُ الاٍ للثٍكالى ولم أكن كثكلى على صمت النعوش تصيح

Youth

Written in Kazakh by Shakarim Qudaiberdiuly in 1879 Translated into English by Sabrina Jaszi, Mirgul Kali, and Ena Selimović in 2023

Diamond eyes, Nightingale’s song, A most unrivaled peri. A moon-like face, Moods butter-soft, And this made her different: Her mind river-wide, Sole lover of mine.

An houri divine, I searched for her. Her unmarred body, Willowy figure, Horsehair-thin waist, Immaculate limbs. An otherworldly girl Untouched by ill-wishes!

Eyes striking, Song flowing, She combs her silky hair. Your strength sapped, Soul wrung out, At her slightest glance. When girls allure, Boys will break.

Running like quicksilver, A darting fox, Your heart scatters. The sword falls, A swooping eagle Seizing its prey. Man has his wants, His surging desire.

Your face draining pale, Mind rattling, Going distances for her. Tiring out horses, Shirking duties, Chasing revelry. Shameless fool, Ripping out your soul for her.

White horse, pale grass, Wearing darkness, Eluding sight, Seeking your true love, Offering your heart, With cunning friend beside you, Journeying to a distant aul. A peregrine taking flight.

Circling the aul, Stalking its edges, Not daring to cross, Peering from on high, Heart pumping, Restless upon the earth. Tell your friend, Go see, Bring me her word.

Your friend slips away, Soundless, unfeeling, A gray snake slithering. An eye’s blink Brings him back Grinning like a merlin. I wish your wish be granted, she said. Be he man, let him approach, she said.

Nothing more to fear. Clothes becoming light, Reeling like a spindle, Treading cautiously, Watching closely, A cat near a mouse. Melting through the door, Or through a crack, a hole.

Into the white yurt, Joints giving way, You draw nearer to truelove. Groping walls, Feeling for her bed, You touch her face, And your mind fades, soul remains, She knows.

Hand finding yours, Arms encircling you, Your lips graze her white neck. Body like sap, Unloosing your tongue. Mind dimming, all shadow. Oh, heavens, heavens. Who could possess their senses?

Gathering yourself, Smelling her, kissing her, Spirit still swirling, But you get your wish, A morsel of flesh, Diving like a peregrine, Dreams made real,
You lie smiling on her chest.

Dawn rushing in, Growing cold in our bodies, You wonder, when again? So, truelove, goodbye, Wait however long. Come soon, she pleads, I’ll die. The dawn’s so short! you say. Is that your only sorrow?

Dawn betrays you, Becoming lighter, No use being idle.
It’s time, you say. Nothing to be done. Pull yourself away. Stay, and dawn drives you out. Go, and truelove holds tight.

Leaving the white yurt, Stealing up the hill, Truelove in step Walking you away. The aul at your back, You cry to her, Banished by dawn. No tricks against the light.

Reaching the pass, Casting one last glance: She stands there still. Your friend will wait, Gripping the reins, While you run to her, Kiss her treasured neck, Brace for a difficult crossing.

from the article:

"Shakarim was a late 19th–early 20th century Kazakh poet, composer, historian, and translator. Despite having no formal education, he was fluent in Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, and Russian languages, versed in Middle Eastern literature and Islamic theology, and familiar with the works of Western and Russian writers and philosophers. Though he initially welcomed the changes brought by the October Revolution in Russia, he later became disillusioned with Soviet politics and lived a reclusive life in the mountains of Eastern Kazakhstan. After he was shot by NKVD policemen in 1931, his songs, ballads, and historical narratives continued to be transmitted orally or via hand-written copies among the local population.

Steeped in the lyricism of medieval Arabic and Persian poetry and the realism of the canonical Kazakh poet Abai (his uncle and mentor), Shakarim developed an intimate, impassioned poetic style through which he explored the spiritual, philosophical, and social issues of his time. Many of Shakarim’s poems feature the figure of “жар,” the Beloved, which in Sufi poetry — particularly in the works of Hafez, whom Shakarim translated and took influence from — represents God. While Shakarim’s beloved is a mortal woman, as in Hafez’s ghazals, she is more than a mere object of desire; she is the singular source of the poet’s overwhelming emotion, compelling him to action. In his later works, Shakarim explicitly links the image of the Beloved — rendered in our translation as “truelove” — to the idea of Truth. By extension, he sees his life mission as a search for Truth through learning and writing."

"Ironically enough for a poet who died under Stalin and whose work was banned until the USSR’s dissolution, the process we arrived upon somewhat resembles the way Soviet translations were produced. Mirgul, a Kazakh-born exophonic translator, spent a week translating the poem and researching obsolete Kazakh terms and expressions, using sources from scholarly works on Shakarim to encyclopedias on flora and fauna of Kazakhstan. During our joint translation sessions she additionally narrated the meaning of each line to Ena and Sabrina. The three of us then went about creating a lyrical translation that in some way fit the original both in meaning and sound. We considered such issues as verb tense (mindful of the poet’s energetic use of the present progressive), pronouns (shifting from the “I” of the older narrator to the “you” of his younger self), and Shakarim’s driving rhyme (which we mostly avoided). In the Soviet era, translations from the more than 130 languages spoken in the USSR would often be produced with the aid of a “podstrochnik” (trot) composed by a local translator — poorly paid and rarely credited — and then “smoothed out” and made “literary” by a Russian translator with little or no knowledge of the source language. The difference in our case is that no translator or part of the process goes unmentioned."

there had been many other options than gigantism, and if the capital reaaaaaaally had to be moved, why not to lampung (not far away from jakarta, no shortage of water supplies, lower risks of floods etc)? instead, "nusantara" is a typical croonie program, with orang koruptor filling their pockets, and leaving damage to the rest, driving away indigenous population etc

the interconnections do not end at this point: peepal tree not only helped to establish peekash (run today by [bocas lit fest](https://www.bocaslitfest.com/ of trinidad and tobago), but peepal tree also recently integrated hoperoad publishing, yet another great uk indie dedicated to literature from the global south