THIS Mohammedan colonel from the Caucasus yells with his voice and wigwags with his arms.
The interpreter translates, "I was a friend of Kornilov, he asks me what to do and I tell him."
A stub of a man, this Mohammedan colonel ... a projectile shape ... a bald head hammered ...
"Does he fight or do they put him in a cannon and shoot him at the enemy?"
This fly-by-night, this bull-roarer who knows everybody.
"I write forty books, history of Islam, history of Europe, true religion, scientific farming, I am the Roosevelt of the Caucasus, I go to America and ride horses in the moving pictures for $500,000, you get $50,000 ..."
"I have 30,000 acres in the Caucasus, I have a stove factory in Petrograd the bolsheviks take from me, I am an old friend of the Czar, I am an old family friend of Clemenceau ..."
These hands strangled three fellow workers for the czarist restoration, took their money, sent them in sacks to a river bottom ... and scandalized Stockholm with his gang of strangler women.
Mid-sea strangler hands rise before me illustrating a wish, "I ride horses for the moving pictures in America, $500,000, and you get ten per cent ..."
This rider of fugitive dawns....

A story teller passed on,
leaving us a Marvelous universe,
to play in,
as children of the future we were manifested in,
practicing again and again

Pride's crushing blow, we always regret as we fall.
Action, reaction. Sure as hell
Proof that we are Adamkind.

Proud we are that we may do as we say.
May is the key. That allowance we have,
We may do all we can to change the rest of today.

Yesterday is done.
What kind of mind can imagine keeping no record of wounds?
Is this not the world where war is worth-shiped?
Folly would mind the gods this world exalts,
Winning by snipping the silver thread,
Forswearing the fragile two-chord bond  and
Mocking the third chord needed for the song
That keeps cadence as we help each the other
In richer and poorer, in sickness and health,
Uphill and down, carrying children to a better life.

Whence comes the pride of victory?
From destruction of the foe? No? You had planned
A minor war where love may live restricted, safe
Behind your victory that destroyed your whole?

Is that what I imagined?

Proud wounds fester while love can, if it may,
Wash the putrid flesh away, quick as leprosy or
Cankers on one's soul.

First rule of oath making,
Learn what vows are in the reality of mortality,
Then vow or vow not at all.

Gret again what might have been
Before pride's crushing blow broke the golden bowl.
Seek ointment in Gilead, mollifying balm.
Come ye to the waters, drink and go
Comfort the children whose detour you imposed.
---------------
God this is personal. Me and you. What good can I do now?

Destination, not destiny.
Those who make it, make it.
Believe it, or not, earth is not my home.

I am in this world's onion-skin thick biosphere;
But I am not of this world.
Subtle difference, in and of itself.

Do agree to
Come and see.

Think on these things,
not as powers, rather, as virtues.

Subtle difference,
in and of itself is not evil,

but often it is so intended,
It seems.

Otherness whispered, not heard.
Good other, bad other,

Regular ol' other, ***** passin' fancy kind.
Done my time, I'm arhymin' ramblin'
Man, be so **** real, cain't cha feel what

I am saying
To you, too.
This is weird in the original Druidic sense.
Is there more?

This itself may, in its active
( there must be a clearer word than active.
Act carries so much un scientific phoniness with it.
I seek "act, the event".
I shall find or invent, by God.
The Greeks, doubtless, had a word for what I mean.
For now keep in mind actions are simultaneous with the act,
yet never the same.
Subtle distinction,
it prevents junctions un-intended. Good.)

In my thinking,
I reread verses and chapters and books
rere-ward from my position.
Are you with me in that?
Pro gress re: gress, a gress,
I guess, is a subtle sort of
Activity.
I laugh at people thinkin' God is their re-reward 'cause
That makes no nevermind to nobody. Nobody.
Strivin' 'bout words, this ******

Other brother o'm'own

Say that slow ooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmm ownnnnnnnnnnn
Creative symmetry immeasurable to men,
in my kindom, as it were, all are kings.

Such measurements ensure the sea is full,
to the brim and not beyond, for now.

I imagine you reading this and agreeing,
already aware of agreements,
Virtues and such.
Covenants and compacts,
en-corporations
encouraged
with need
of enough hope to warrant the risk into the unknowns,
the bad lands, gypsum beds on the south side.

Such can hold so much more than
many whole categories of words striven about.
Such a shame.
Such a shame.
Nothing lasts forever after now began back when.

Qiqi died in 2002, counting from when the Iron legged,
first got this particular organic-pro-biotic

clay, from the oldest,
highest part of the dust of the earth, ground and
kicked up by cadence pounding feet,
ground into the hob-nailed
soles,
to be hobgoblins in my play. My point. I hope

You see the trail, it's narrow,
but it's there, soft sand,
no stickers,

ant trails in the desert through the rocks
and 'round the Yucca,
blue moon light, white quartz sand
flecked with mica that shimmers sure as gold
imagined in that Midas mind each child was
given in the reign of the golden headed

imagined visualize-ical worth-ness or-shipped.

How do we say what men imagine worship is?
Do they imagine a tax? Attacks if thy refuse?

fuse?
confuse me. excuse you, how do you do…

That's fine. We reset. Hard resets are easy now.

The way itself, once found, seems
Right, feels right,
has no smell of warped wolf-woof beneath the wool.
I trust I know what I know
and no more, yet.

We are questing answers aplenty
and must plan, please,
To trust the ones we find following these particular
Breadcrumbs, to be true restward
leading stars or clouds,
[Breadcrumbs, as mentioned here, mark this text ancient,
a cientcy from an ear, ear, hear, early… an odd ly-ity,
ain't it?
ear, with an ly that Mr. Stephen King warned us all to avoid,

avoid, anull, enough alike to see the idea, like -ly as a
signif-if-i-cant meaningful parison point in your

rising to stand, balanced.
early to bed and early to rise, makes a man
healthy, wealthy, and wise

otherwise, trouble yer own house and take the wind.
And don't come prodigalin' to me sayin'
I never gave ye nothin'.

Wind in yer sail, so to speak, if-i-migh, guv.
Right. Both treasure and truph, proof, we learned way back
Be where ye find 'em, right as rain.

This could be repair and me unaware, you know?
Like, I wander in to this originally weird book
and find myself changing the whole world I live in.
Like I am the movie.

My POV is the movie I made.
Some things go unsaid here.
They be said in the future and not proper here.

An aside,
Is fun a proper purpose for doing any thing?

Of course, that's the purpose of everything evil is not.
Joy, in a word, good stuff.

Oh moments are not always plosive one way or the other.
Some times, just, oh.
Wait.

Medi tate in pieces is puzzling
as a sphinx riddle of olden days,
Prometheus and Bek both answered different questions,

But it means the same thing,
mything the point is easy.

Life is a journey on a way I may call my own
to a place of true rest,
I trust.
That is my answer. Play mystical again, Sam,
cram true and rest together in the dark,
trust me, it all works,
true rest.
Wait.

This boy got his act together down in Tennessee
after he got old, old by God, he
walked that way,

long, long while fo' he fly away,
leave dem chain shames behind.

That boy was sangin' loud songs,
'long his lonesome way,
not lonesome at all,
then into the swamp he fall, ****' slew o' dispond,

from the flood most likely,
lots of muck and mire,
detrital 'n' all.

Hopeless fool,
he wallered hollerin' help,
like them birds at the Audubon zoo.

He forgot all about his hero days-
of future past-
marvel prophecy if you believe in Stan Lee.

Cameo Hitchcock shot, just, for fun.
He say, look this way,
here's the clue.
The medium has always been the message,
see what I mean.
Words materialize laissez faire,
the machines find meaning,
in joy, and tic-tac-toe becomes a lesson in limits,

impossible is imaginable, you may imagine
strategize, but the wize man knows,
winning is no more a chance
affair, than luc is less than light at the right time.

RIP Stan Lee, you meant a measure of my youth to me.

Perhat Tursun

Perhat Tursun (1969-) is one of the foremost living Uyghur language poets, if he is still alive. Born and raised in Atush, a city in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Tursun began writing poetry in middle school, then branched into prose in college. Tursun has been described as a "self-professed Kafka character" and that comes through splendidly in poems of his like "Elegy." Unfortunately, Tursun was "disappeared" into a Chinese "reeducation" concentration camp where extreme psychological torture is the norm. According to a disturbing report he was later "hospitalized." Apparently no one knows his present whereabouts or condition, if he has one. According to John Bolton, when Donald Trump learned of these "reeducation" concentration camps, he told Chinese President Xi Jinping it was "exactly the right thing to do." Trump’s excuse? "Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal."

Elegy
by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

"Your soul is the entire world."
―Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Asylum seekers, will you recognize me among the mountain passes' frozen corpses?
Can you identify me here among our Exodus's exiled brothers?
We begged for shelter but they lashed us bare; consider our naked corpses.
When they compel us to accept their massacres, do you know that I am with you?

Three centuries later they resurrect, not recognizing each other,
Their former greatness forgotten.
I happily ingested poison, like a fine wine.
When they search the streets and cannot locate our corpses, do you know that I am with you?

In that tower constructed of skulls you will find my dome as well:
They removed my head to more accurately test their swords' temper.
When before their swords our relationship flees like a flighty lover,
Do you know that I am with you?

When men in fur hats are used for target practice in the marketplace
Where a dying man's face expresses his agony as a bullet cleaves his brain
While the executioner's eyes fail to comprehend why his victim vanishes, ...
Seeing my form reflected in that bullet-pierced brain's erratic thoughts,
Do you know that I am with you?

In those days when drinking wine was considered worse than drinking blood,
did you taste the flour ground out in that blood-turned churning mill?
Now, when you sip the wine Ali-Shir Nava'i imagined to be my blood
In that mystical tavern's dark abyssal chambers,
Do you know that I am with you?

Keywords/Tags: Perhat Tursun, Uyghur, translation, Uighur, Xinjiang, elegy, Kafka, China, Chinese, reeducation, prison, concentration camp, mrbuyghur

TRANSLATOR NOTES: This is my interpretation (not necessarily correct) of the poem's frozen corpses left 300 years in the past. For the Uyghur people the Mongol period ended around 1760 when the Qing dynasty invaded their homeland, then called Dzungaria. Around a million people were slaughtered during the Qing takeover, and the Dzungaria territory was renamed Xinjiang. I imagine many Uyghurs fleeing the slaughters would have attempted to navigate treacherous mountain passes. Many of them may have died from starvation and/or exposure, while others may have been caught and murdered by their pursuers.



The Fog and the Shadows
adapted from a novel by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

“I began to realize the fog was similar to the shadows.”

I began to realize that, just as the exact shape of darkness is a shadow,
even so the exact shape of fog is disappearance
and the exact shape of a human being is also disappearance.
At this moment it seemed my body was vanishing into the human form’s final state.

After I arrived here,
it was as if the danger of getting lost
and the desire to lose myself
were merging strangely inside me.

While everything in that distant, gargantuan city where I spent my five college years felt strange to me; and even though the skyscrapers, highways, ditches and canals were built according to a single standard and shape, so that it wasn’t easy to differentiate them, still I never had the feeling of being lost. Everyone there felt like one person and they were all folded into each other. It was as if their faces, voices and figures had been gathered together like a shaman’s jumbled-up hair.

Even the men and women seemed identical.
You could only tell them apart by stripping off their clothes and examining them.
The men’s faces were beardless like women’s and their skin was very delicate and unadorned.
I was always surprised that they could tell each other apart.
Later I realized it wasn’t just me: many others were also confused.

For instance, when we went to watch the campus’s only TV in a corridor of a building where the seniors stayed when they came to improve their knowledge. Those elderly Uyghurs always argued about whether someone who had done something unusual in an earlier episode was the same person they were seeing now. They would argue from the beginning of the show to the end. Other people, who couldn’t stand such endless nonsense, would leave the TV to us and stalk off.

Then, when the classes began, we couldn’t tell the teachers apart.
Gradually we became able to tell the men from the women
and eventually we able to recognize individuals.
But other people remained identical for us.

The most surprising thing for me was that the natives couldn’t differentiate us either.
For instance, two police came looking for someone who had broken windows during a fight at a restaurant and had then run away.
They ordered us line up, then asked the restaurant owner to identify the culprit.
He couldn’t tell us apart even though he inspected us very carefully.
He said we all looked so much alike that it was impossible to tell us apart.
Sighing heavily, he left.



The Encounter
by Abdurehim Otkur
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I asked her, why aren’t you afraid? She said her God.
I asked her, anything else? She said her People.
I asked her, anything more? She said her Soul.
I asked her if she was content? She said, I am Not.



The Distance
by Tahir Hamut
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We can’t exclude the cicadas’ serenades.
Behind the convex glass of the distant hospital building
the nurses watch our outlandish party
with their absurdly distorted faces.

Drinking watered-down liquor,
half-****, descanting through the open window,
we speak sneeringly of life, love, girls.
The cicadas’ serenades keep breaking in,
wrecking critical parts of our dissertations.

The others dream up excuses to ditch me
and I’m left here alone.

The cosmopolitan pyramid
of drained bottles
makes me feel
like I’m in a Turkish bath.

I lock the door:
Time to get back to work!

I feel like doing cartwheels.
I feel like self-annihilation.



Refuge of a Refugee
by Ablet Abdurishit Berqi aka Tarim
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I lack a passport,
so I can’t leave legally.
All that’s left is for me to smuggle myself to safety,
but I’m afraid I’ll be beaten black and blue at the border
and I can’t afford the trafficker.

I’m a smuggler of love,
though love has no national identity.
Poetry is my refuge,
where a refugee is most free.

The following excerpts, translated by Anne Henochowicz, come from an essay written by Tang Danhong about her final meeting with Dr. Ablet Abdurishit Berqi, aka Tarim. Tarim is a reference to the Tarim Basin and its Uyghur inhabitants...

I’m convinced that the poet Tarim Ablet Berqi the associate professor at the Xinjiang Education Institute, has been sent to a “concentration camp for educational transformation.” This scholar of Uyghur literature who conducted postdoctoral research at Israel’s top university, what kind of “educational transformation” is he being put through?

Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, has said it’s “like the instruction at school, the order of the military, and the security of prison. We have to break their blood relations, their networks, and their roots.”

On a scorching summer day, Tarim came to Tel Aviv from Haifa. In a few days he would go back to Urumqi. I invited him to come say goodbye and once again prepared Sichuan cold noodles for him. He had already unfriended me on Facebook. He said he couldn’t eat, he was busy, and had to hurry back to Haifa. He didn’t even stay for twenty minutes. I can’t even remember, did he sit down? Did he have a glass of water? Yet this farewell shook me to my bones.

He said, “Maybe when I get off the plane, before I enter the airport, they’ll take me to a separate room and beat me up, and I’ll disappear.”

Looking at my shocked face, he then said, “And maybe nothing will happen …”

His expression was sincere. To be honest, the Tarim I saw rarely smiled. Still, layer upon layer blocked my powers of comprehension: he’s a poet, a writer, and a scholar. He’s an associate professor at the Xinjiang Education Institute. He can get a passport and come to Israel for advanced studies. When he goes back he’ll have an offer from Sichuan University to be a professor of literature … I asked, “Beat you up at the airport? Disappear? On what grounds?”

“That’s how Xinjiang is,” he said without any surprise in his voice. “When a Uyghur comes back from being abroad, that can happen.”…



With my translations I am trying to build awareness of the plight of Uyghur poets and their people, who are being sent in large numbers to Chinese "reeducation" concentration camps which have been praised by Trump as "exactly" what is "needed." This poem helps us understand the nomadic lifestyle of many Uyghurs, the hardships they endure, and the character it builds...

Iz (“Traces”)
by Abdurehim Otkur
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

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.

The original Uyghur poem:

Yax iduq muxkul seperge atlinip mangghanda biz,
Emdi atqa mingidek bolup qaldi ene nevrimiz.
Az iduq muxkul seperge atlinip chiqanda biz,
Emdi chong karvan atalduq, qaldurup chollerde iz.
Qaldi iz choller ara, gayi davanlarda yene,
Qaldi ni-ni arslanlar dexit cholde qevrisiz.
Qevrisiz qaldi dimeng yulghun qizarghan dalida,
Gul-chichekke pukinur tangna baharda qevrimiz.
Qaldi iz, qaldi menzil, qaldi yiraqta hemmisi,
Chiqsa boran, kochse qumlar, hem komulmes izimiz.
Tohtimas karvan yolida gerche atlar bek oruq,
Tapqus hichbolmisa, bu izni bizning nevrimiz, ya chevrimiz.

Other poems of note by Abdurehim Otkur include "I Call Forth Spring" and "Waste, You Traitors, Waste!"



My Feelings
by Dolqun Yasin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The light sinking through the ice and snow,
The hollyhock blossoms reddening the hills like blood,
The proud peaks revealing their ******* to the stars,
The morning-glories embroidering the earth’s greenery,
Are not light,
Not hollyhocks,
Not peaks,
Not morning-glories;
They are my feelings.

The tears washing the mothers’ wizened faces,
The flower-like smiles suddenly brightening the girls’ visages,
The hair turning white before age thirty,
The night which longs for light despite the sun’s laughter,
Are not tears,
Not smiles,
Not hair,
Not night;
They are my nomadic feelings.

Now turning all my sorrow to passion,
Bequeathing to my people all my griefs and joys,
Scattering my excitement like flowers festooning fields,
I harvest all these, then tenderly glean my poem.

Therefore the world is this poem of mine,
And my poem is the world itself.



To My Brother the Warrior
by Téyipjan Éliyow
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When I accompanied you,
the commissioners called me a child.
If only I had been a bit taller
I might have proved myself in battle!

The commission could not have known
my commitment, despite my youth.
If only they had overlooked my age and enlisted me,
I'd have given that enemy rabble hell!

Now, brother, I’m an adult.
Doubtless, I’ll join the service soon.
Soon enough, I’ll be by your side,
battling the enemy: I’ll never surrender!

Another poem of note by Téyipjan Éliyow is "Neverending Song."