Bahtiyar Hidayet, Azerbaijan. 3 poem

In this ruined country,

I live like an owl.

The black nights of this country are mine,

Its black days are mine.

My eyes are deep red,

But this time not from anger.

Since I saw you,

My eyes have reddened from emotion and passion.

May I not have a night without you.

You call your fate dark,

I do not want our fate

To turn white from the roots like the trees in the city’s exotic park,

I do not want our fate

To turn white from the top like the mountains under the enemy’s boots.

If the black nights are ours,

May I not have a night without you.

I am not someone who accepts death easily.

There is no water on my face.

Neither hunger killed me,

Nor exile, nor police torture,

Nor the damp prison wall crying for freedom.

Kiss me, kiss me, so that my face may be soaked with water.

May I not have a night without you.

My mind does not forget the oppression and suffering my eyes have seen.

To forget this,

I want to see you like the naked truth.

I am tired of lies dressed in the clothes of truth.

May eyes not see what my eyes have seen.

Be my naked truth,

May I not have a night without you.

I am very tired, very.

From the shouting in the stands,

From the screams in the squares.

Now these noises should be killed

By your passionate whispers.

May I not have a night without you.

I do not want, after a fake election,

To become a mute member of parliament.

I want my Jesus-breathed beloved

To kill me with her kiss

And revive me with her breath.

May I remain speechless before this miracle.

Come, come, let the smell of your sweat spread like perfume.

Beautiful one whose chest is the gate of heaven,

May I not have a night without you.

I shed sweat of shame,

Because after every election I shed sweat of shame.

Now your sweat-scented body

Should make me faint…

I too have secretly slept while on guard duty for the homeland,

There on the ground.

But now is not the time to sleep,

Let me forget the homeland and politics too…

Now is the time for betrayal.

Come,

May I not have a night without you.

May I not have a night without you.

2

The poem written on my father’s tombstone

One side of the grave faces the Qibla,

The other side faces the ancestral homeland.

So that your soul may fly to Eskipara,

We covered the mirrors in the house with cloth.

But still, there is no hope that we will be able to return to the ancestral homeland.

That is why

We have reserved a place for my mother near your grave.

May your soul be happy, father.

May your soul be happy in Eskipara.

We can only go to that paradise by dying.

And the place we reserved for my mother –

Protect her like a soldier.

She loved you very much,

After you, she is like a soul.

Protect her eternal place.

May my mother’s soul be happy

Because she is like a soul even when she is alive.

But this is not because of longing for the homeland,

This is because of your longing, father.

When my mother lost her homeland,

She was not so sad.

3

The Disappeared Snake

A big hospital.

In the morning, work has just begun. 

Seriously ill patients are standing in line in front of the doctors’ rooms. 

The groaning makes ears ache.

 There is not a single doctor in the room.

 They are all in a meeting. The new chief is proving himself.

Finally, the meeting ended.

 The white coats of the doctors 

Were like white shrouds. 

As if the dead had risen

 And returned from the graveyard. 

And now they would send 

New dead people to the graveyard 

From this hospital where no new medicine can be found.

Meanwhile, 

Those who profited 

Were the mullahs, grave diggers, and corpse washers.

But they are very merciless creatures.

 Not one of them thanked the new chief.

… This is an old tradition.

 Every new chief 

Adds a little innovation to this tradition.

Meanwhile, 

The chiefs are young chiefs. 

But illness and death have become younger too. 

This is the best care for young people. 

Living too long means too much suffering.

Meanwhile, 

I remembered white-coated butchers

 When I looked at the white-coated doctors.

Just as butchers look at a cow 

And calculate how much profit it will bring, Doctors also look at patients 

And calculate their profits. 

People studied for twenty years and became butchers. 

This is how the education industry has developed.

But when I looked at the white-coated cleaners, 

Sparks of hope appeared in my chest. 

Maybe these cleaners can sweep this system away.

And on the old sign at the entrance of the hospital, 

The snake, the symbol of medicine, is very pale, It can hardly be seen.

 Maybe it ran away, frightened by these butchers.

People expecting help from their own butchers— Not even animals do that.

 Even animals without legs can escape from their butchers.

… I would say, «May God give strength to the cleaners,»

 But the wages they receive

 Are only enough to live like slaves. 

Even God is powerless here.

 God’s servants are also the servants of officials.

 Each official is like a god.

 God cannot free His servants from them.

… Thus, The disappeared snake Is the symbol of disappeared conscience and mercy.

White coats are the symbol of white shrouds. If we put the whole country through an X-ray machine, 

What I say would be confirmed.

… P.S.

I wonder, Can an X-ray machine 

Find the disappeared snake?