The plains were on the verge of death,

Until the sudden lightning flashed.

That curved, sharp line

Like a cardiogram —

Nature will live.

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.

The Gardiogram of Nature

There was a time when the skies were calm,

Then the skies suddenly thundered like a spark of genius.

A torrential rain fell —

Every drop a word, every stream a verse.

 

The trees bathed

The mist was a white towel — they dried themselves.

 

The earth was cracked, thirsty for water,

The waters crept to heal its wounds.

 

The drops leaped and jumped with joy

As if bringing revelation, the drops that descended from above

The news came from heaven — this year will be abundant.

 

The earth joined in the celebration

For this divine ceremony, God

Sprinkled white sugared almonds from heaven — it rained.

 

The plains were on the verge of death,

Until the sudden lightning flashed.

That curved, sharp line

Like a cardiogram —

Nature will live.

 

The drops merged and became a flood, my brother.

But I regret that precisely when we are together, we either create a useless party,

Or crush the weak,

Or create a criminal gang.

 

White clouds in the sky

They acted with self-satisfied confidence,

As if they had undergone a complex medical operation —

Without bribes, without gifts.

 

But there was a poet in the hospital

He did not receive treatment because he had no money.

All the paths of his life were straight lines,

Only the line of his heart was crooked.

…It seems that soon that line will also straighten out,

He thinks about his children

His tears are like rain.

***

Date and Month

I remember well,

I wrote my first poem with a knife:

In the pistachio tree,

My name together with that girl’s name:

Bahtiyar + so-and-so = love.

It wasn’t hard to print then:

Knife, forest,

And “forest ranger – editor”.

 

Then I wrote my poem with charcoal.

I drew hearts on the walls,

And crossed arrows went through that heart.

Then they replaced the knife with a pen.

At that time, the forest ranger wouldn’t say anything,

But the editors found a hundred excuses.

Those editors

Who couldn’t be a poet

Became an editor out of necessity.

 

…The shepherd said: “Your sheep gave birth!”

How much I was in a hurry

To see the newborn lamb,

Now I’m not in a hurry

To buy a newspaper from the kiosk

Which my poem was printed in.

I know that the editor changed something.

 

I grew up.

The villains wrote “poems” with a knife on my back.

They really shot my heart with an arrow.

That forest guard is no more,

Nor that shepherd,

Nor that time, nor that lover, nor that love, nor that purity.

Nor that forest…

They cut down that forest and made newspapers.

Lies are written in those newspapers,

And the poems of those who cannot be poets are published.

In those newspapers, only the date of the month is correct.

They cut down that forest and extracted coal.

They eat my dreams like kebabs.

 

Now the situation is like this:

Bahtiyar + sadness = worse sadness.

In short,

Like an orphan lamb, I am an angel.

This is still a good situation –

A knife has not been drawn to my throat.

My first love remained

Like a wound

On the trunk of that tree.

The oppressors destroyed it too.

The walls that I had built around that heart collapsed;

Those walls fell on memories.

 

…They eat my dreams like kebabs.

Their smoke has blinded me.

I can’t find a wall to hold on to and walk on,

But for me

The world has become four walls.

And I forgot the time –

Thank God there are those newspapers.

I look at the date of the month –

The date of an unknown month,

The date of an unknown month.

***

The Land of Happy Statues

The municipal workers

Clean the statues in the city.

The statues are washed for free.

 

But in the sea,

All the beaches are paid.

The poor cannot swim in the sea,

Their value is less than a stone.

 

The worst thing is:

Around the clean statues,

Poor and untidy people ask for help

 

They are worth less than the money they have.

I send my greetings to everyone from the Land of Happy Statues.

________________

Read: Curse me, beggar – Poetry from Azerbaijan