Oh, beggar woman,

Don’t pray for me.

If your prayers had any power,

You wouldn’t be a beggar yourself.

Bahtiyar Hidayet is a poet from Azerbaijan

Bahtiyar Hidayet, born in 1974 in the Gazakh region of the Republic of Azerbaijan, graduated from university in 1995 and has been working as a history teacher since 1998. Wrote poetry since high school and has 4 poetry books published in Azerbaijan.

Curse me, beggar

Oh, beggar woman,

Don’t pray for me.

If your prayers had any power,

You wouldn’t be a beggar yourself.

 

Curse me if you can.

Because I’m in a worse situation than you.

My salary ran out in four days.

Loans, fines, taxes, weddings, medical treatment – that’s it.

–

Now I don’t even have the money I had.

Unfortunately, there’s no place to beg –

Every place already has its own beggar.

 

It’s the big, big beggars who have put us in this beggarly situation:

This is bribery, this is corruption

–

Look at the bird market opposite.

There’s grain in front of the chickens in the cage,

And the free sparrows are running towards those cages.

Look – I’m in the same situation as those sparrows.

Happy swallows and cranes have fled this land.

–

But I have hope.

In the neighbor’s yard,

I will mow the grass.

–

Curse me, beggar woman.

Curse me, let my Azrael come.

Let Azrael come with a sickle in his hand.

Let him help me a little –

I will mow the grass in the neighbor’s yard.

***

1

A little girl dressed in a white dove in a city park gives sunflower seeds to wild pigeons.

–

Do you know what I remember?

 The war in our land began like this:

A bride dressed in a white dove as a wedding dress was shot by the enemy.

Her white wedding dress became a symbol of the red war. While the white dove was a symbol of peace,

It became a symbol of war.

 

It seems that the little girl in a white dress

Tamed the wild pigeons.

But politicians with bloodshot eyes

Even turned domestic pigeons into symbols of war.

 

Adults turned the symbol of peace into a symbol of war.

The rule of the world should be given to children,

Let the children tame the wild adults so that

The white doves do not blush.

2

Because he had grown old, a shepherd dog was abandoned.

He whimpered in front of a butcher’s shop in the city.

The butcher took pity on him

And threw him the head of a ram.

 

A few days later, the dog’s body was found nearby.

He had not eaten the ram’s head.

He had laid his own head upon it and died.

By the way—

That ram had been the old ram of the flock he once guarded.

 

The butcher became very moved.

His own old age came before his eyes.

His father was in a retirement home.

His son was in prison because of drug addiction.

3

The park was the resting place of the poor.

Pine trees were standing like a row of soldiers.

 

One day the oligarchs,

At the state level,

Occupied the park.

 

All the soldiers became martyrs.

And then…

 

What came next was even more terrible:

They sent those pines to the coffin workshop.

 

Now, in the place of those pines,

There is an expensive restaurant.

 

The poor, again,

Have taken shelter in those pines —

Pine trees make excellent coffins.

 

But the most terrible thing

Will be when the oligarchs occupy the cemetery.

There are also pine trees there —

Standing like irregular soldiers.

 

…This is our modern world’s regular.

_______________________

Read: While he was fencing