“Heavier than age”

Aigerim Tazhi, tr. from the Russian by J. Kates
| poetry

 

Heavier than age
Morning has us
By the throat.
Why do you birds rise so early?
Birds have tiny tongues
A bird is a bell.

Dark people in white clothing
Creep around town.
Heaven, heaven, pour into their ears
A song of tin.

Let them hear only the sea,
The old sea, the new sea.
While we keep on crying out
Crying out our grief.

 

Aigerim Tazhi was born in the western Kazakh city of Aktobe in 1981. She is a graduate of the Aktyubinsk (Zhubanov) State University. She has received numerous literary prizes and lives in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

J. Kates is a poet and literary translator who lives in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire.

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