Continuity: 14

Nijat mamedov

Translated from RUSSIAN by Esmira Serova

To Zakir Asadov

B/r/e/a/k/i/n/g points abolish outdated languages.
Ideas are fished out right from the surrounding atmosphere.
In what language do you understand yourself today?
Selection, translocation, transfusion, transfer
(techniques of continuous, or circular breathing),
as well as birth, death and, possibly, love,
are the common experience that puts the sign “=” between freedom and total disappearance,
when one suddenly realizes, “We all will die. Me too? Me too.” And sings.
What is so cruel about it? Does it hurt to look? But suddenly!—birds inside.
It all booms somewhere in the pipes of bones. You just have to
to go through life with this song and listen to it every day.
Life flies by terrifyingly quickly, but that’s not terrifying.
Monochrome rustling is achieved through absence.
All we can create from words without music is a wall of misunderstanding.
But the mazelike movement of speech
(the shell of the ear’s inwardly curled openness to a tremolo on shofar (1)—
three short notes resembling a sigh as the sign of awareness of one’s mistakes)
catches the stray sky in the coils of cords.
I’m not comparing different kinds of poetry, I’m not saying
that one is better than another. I’m just pursuing other purposes,
Some, for instance, are moved by such articulation,
while most don’t notice anything beyond the audible claptrap,
waiting for a major or minor, “beautiful harmony”.
I understand, everyone has a retrospective ideal of their own.
But it doesn’t matter if it sounds clumsy.
Because it launches the wheel of self-reflection as well.
This was sometime a paradox, but now it’s been proved:
chaos requires working on creating a whole,
a representation of a well-oiled machine of death
with a hard-to-verbalize feeling that emphasizes
the inappropriateness of formal logic in a conversation about quivering air
(an angel flew through my brain and brushed the most essential childhood imprinting;
the naked gay depth, easily conquered by
doves in the yard next door only v o i d).
The phrase immediately falls apart to free up space
for a new one and the book remains spread open like wings.
__________________

1 Shofar is an ancient Jewish musical instrument typically made of a ram’s horn, used for religious purposes