In his last interview, Rasul Gamzatov talked about the history of the poem “Cranes”: “At that not-so-close time, I was in Japan and saw a monument to white cranes in Hiroshima. The Japanese have a belief that if a sick person cuts out a thousand crane figures from paper, he will recover. I was told that a girl died in Hiroshima, a victim of the consequences of a nuclear bomb, but she did not manage to bring the number of paper cranes to a thousand. I was shocked by this death. And then the Soviet diplomat handed me a telegram informing me of the death of my mother. I flew to Moscow and on the plane, thinking about my mother, I remembered my deceased father and brothers who died in the war. But that Hiroshima girl with paper cranes did not leave my memory, that’s how this poem was written. But when the song based on the verses “Cranes” was already ready, ardent opponents with party-atheistic concepts appeared, who argued that the song sounded like a church prayer and could be used for propaganda purposes. The issue was resolved at the level of senior political leadership, and only thanks to the support of L.I. Brezhnev's song was accepted. In the song “Cranes” there is no distinction between nationality and party affiliation; it is a requiem song for the dead. She will remain that way.” Monuments to the “White Cranes” erected all over the planet are one large memorial complex dedicated to the poetry of Rasul Gamzatov. The White Crane Days, held annually in Dagestan, were founded on the initiative of Gamzatov in 1986 and became an all-Russian national day of remembrance and international holiday poetry.

Rasul Gamzatov

"There are no all-knowing people in the world,
There is only one who thinks himself omniscient,

A condemning look and a punishing voice.


Neither Pushkin nor Socrates knew everything,
Everything in general knows the world, big and crowded,
Sometimes those who think judge
Themselves as bearers of absolute truths."
/R.Gamzatov/

RASUL GAMZATOV


(08.09.1923-03.11.2003)



Eight lines of Rasul Gamzatov


We are on earth and so are our shadows.
They are at our very feet, in the dust
We trample the shadow, but we cannot trample it.
Together with her we will disappear from the face of the earth.


Hours and days flow mercilessly
We are people, we grow old every hour.
Even though next to time we are only shadows,
It wipes us off the face of the earth.



You are before us, time, don’t be proud,
Considering all people to be his shadow.
There are many people whose lives
The very source of your glow.


Be gratefully illuminating us
To thinkers, heroes and poets.
You glowed and you glow now
Not with your own, but with their great light.



I see childhood that is long gone
With a smile and a tear on an eyelash.
No matter how many times I call him, it
He will not come to me again, he will not return.


I see old age, I see ahead
Silent in anticipation of anxiety,
No matter how much I shouted to her: “Go away!” -
Standing, gray-haired, on my road.



What passes, we do not own,
Only the present belongs to us,
While we regret the past,
Life will turn the coming day into the past.


Robbing us unceremoniously,
Time leaves nothing.
And there are no judges over him, and there is no law,
The punisher is theft.



“Why are you silent, abandoned house,
Or do you find it difficult to recognize me?
The house built by my father's hands
Why don’t you meet your chick?”


The stones said: “Finally understand,
What joy do we have, stupid chick,
If under the roof of your native nest
Sometimes you fly in as a guest for a day.”



And he will ask for his native house on the old street,
When I freeze at his porch:
"Where is your father?" I’ll answer - the house will frown,
Like a son, learning about the death of his father.


And the native house on the old street will ask:
“Where are you going brothers, answer quickly!”
I will answer - and my home will frown,
Like an old man who has lost his sons.



“Tell me, spring, what is red, what is rich?”
“Well, what can I tell you, an eccentric man,
You will never understand me anyway,
Until the snow falls in the foothills!”


“Oh youth, I know you are hiding something,
Show off your fun and your wealth!”
“Eccentric, you still won’t understand anything,
Until you become completely gray!”



And the morning came early again,
But there is no sun. Fog covered the fields
And, having grown old overnight from waiting,
The wet ground frowned.


A shadow touched her stern face.
The earth is like a mother who has a son
I waited, I waited for someone alive and healthy,
And the horse returned without a rider.



I wander through the mown meadow,
On the stones of my native land.
Childhood friend, dear friend,
As in previous years, not with me.


I'm alone, next door to me
There is no one and nothing.
Who am I talking to? Maybe since childhood
Maybe with the shadow of my friend.



Crowned with a white hat,
Sometimes your head is empty.
Sometimes he is a coward, and out of fear
The owner of the golden saber is trembling.


Who owns the bins full,
And sometimes his life is empty.
And a song with simple words
It happens for a real reason.



“That man over there, what do you say about him?”
The friend answered, shrugging his shoulders:

What good do I know about him?”


“That man over there, what do you say about him?” -
I asked another friend.
“I don’t know this man,
What bad thing can I say about him?



I don't lie down alone, on my chest,
Like a woman, anxiety tends.
Either joy or sadness rush to cling to me,
And fear, like a dog, lies at the threshold.


I'm not the only one who gets up at the beginning of the day.
First, anxiety wakes up.
Sadness and joy rise before me,
And fear is already scratching at the threshold.



Publishers honor dead writers,
They prepare their books after a while.
They are in no hurry to publish living poets,
The living are printed modestly.


I am alive and therefore modest and quiet.
I'm afraid I'll need a little extra:
At the expense of my posthumous volumes
Publish a book during your lifetime.



The night is boring, like a long story.
The night is as dark as a guilty conscience.
Like an annoying guest this night -
He hesitates and does not leave.


Night at the gates, deep sleep in the house,
My friend is coming, he is still far away.
I'm waiting, I don't sleep all night long.
Morning will come, my friend will come.



What the wind blows into chips or shreds,
What perishes from whirlwinds is worth little.
That which is not durable turns into dust:
Rotten wood, an empty word.


Don't cry because bad weather cripples you,
About what died in the fleeting struggle,
And the wind has no power over the eternal value:
Over the forest, and the garden, and a good song.



The fruit of my insomnia and worries,
Book, here I take you in my hands.
So, probably, a child born in pain,
The mother takes him in her arms for the first time.


What will you be, the end or the glory?
I hold you in front of me.
So the soldier's tunic is a bloody scrap
Raises it like a banner - and into battle!



My shoulders were whiter
Why are they turning black now?
Black color - the remnant of bright days
The sun was warm - my shoulders were tanned.


My hair was blacker
Why are they turning white now?
Whiteness remains from the nights
Black, barely lit.



Death does not want to quarrel with me.
She has long since switched to “you”
She swam for me across the sea more than once,
She was chasing in the mountains to throw her from a height.


Either falling behind, or stepping on your heels,
Breathing heavily behind my back,
She doesn't play hide and seek with me,
He plays tag and chases me.



I have forgotten my song today,
The one that yesterday seemed more expensive than everyone else.
And maybe the song that I’m singing now,
Only a day will pass, I will forget too


But one song sunk into my soul,
My mother sang it to me with hidden sadness,
That song was born of such love,
That can never be forgotten.



I forgot my age, why should I
Are you saying that I am gray-haired and you are younger?
Who knows, maybe in this gray hair
And your youth is to blame too.


There is no need to reproach me with old age,
Reminding oneself of age is pointless.
It is cruel to speak to the wounded
That his wound was fatal.



An eagle flaps its wings in the clouds,
Sparrows have built a nest on the slope.
Sparrows also think of themselves as eagles,
May God not give them eagle wings.


The wind raises waves in the sea.
In sleepy rivers the waters are still.
These rivers think of themselves as the sea,
Let their ships not ply them.



I had thoughts, but in vain,
Without weaving them into lines or speech,
Like papers classified as "secret"
I tried to hide them and save them.


My thoughts faded, faded,
I hid them - I didn’t remember where.
Sometimes they were returned
They sometimes disappeared.



"Why is the silver bird
Doesn't come down to our feet,
Doesn’t she love us or is she afraid?”
“Maybe he loves us, but he doesn’t believe us!”


“Why are there always and everywhere animals
They strive to disappear from our eyes,
They don’t like us or don’t believe us?”
“They may love us, but they are afraid of us!”



Life is a carpet. But I weaved clumsily,
And now I'm ashamed of myself.
Lots of extra lines and spaces
I find it in my pattern.


I wrote the book, but clumsily:
There are countless empty pages in it.
Where did you stop along the way, maturity?
Why did you come so late?



In India it is believed that snakes
They crawled to the ground first.
Highlanders believe that eagles are older
Other inhabitants of the earth.


I am inclined to think that at first
People appeared, and later
Many of them became eagles,
And others turned into snakes.



So a little horseman was born, -
It seems to me that I was born
Somewhere a wedding is dancing and making noise, -
I imagine that I got married.


Somewhere in a field a man was killed
Somewhere a mother is moaning over her fallen son,
Somewhere women are crying loudly.
I imagine I'm being buried.



The poet has not learned how to avoid trouble,
And the joys themselves rush past.
And I am Leningrad in forty-one,
And I am in Hiroshima in 1945.


Jew - in Treblinka they burn me,
I am Czech in Lidice, I am French in Oradour.
Wherever there is a fire, you cannot escape the fire,
Wherever the thunder roars, I perish from the storm.



Although I heard this tale a long time ago,
I remember her again:
Taking you by the hand, he led you around the world
A grieving son for his blind mother.


He walked and walked and cured the old woman,
And she saw the light of day...
Blind earth, give me your hand quickly,
Come with me, you must see clearly.



Everyone claps, everyone congratulates while standing
Me with another of the awards.
But I'm not happy, I see: these two
They look into my eyes and reproach me.


They follow me everywhere
Their faces and mine are the same face...
One old man, the one I will soon be,
The other is the boy I was a long time ago.



The fortune teller told me fortunes on the stones,
The fortune teller predicted my fate.
“Your goal is wonderful,” she said, “
But you have a lot of enemies in life.”


Wait, fortune teller, don’t work in vain,
After all, it is clear without your fortune telling:
When a person's goal is beautiful,
He has many opponents.



I am the Negro of my poems. All day long
I bend my back, wiping off the sweat tiredly.
And for them, my masters, everything is not enough:
And at one hour of the night I’m not too lazy to drive.


I'm a rickshaw puller, and the shafts are on both sides
They rub my skin and the shaking is endless,
And the stroller gets heavier every day,
Which I am harnessed to forever.



Poetry, you are not the servant of the strong,
You protected those who were humiliated
You covered for everyone who was offended
I saw those in power as an enemy.


Poetry, you and I don’t suit us
Raise your honest voice for the strong,
You can't look like a bride
Which self-interest leads to the crown.



Self-preservation is a concern.
People, fear accompanies us.
Do you hear: in that house, afraid of something,
A person cries as soon as he is born.


Eternal fear drives us somewhere
The entire human race is on earth.
Do you hear a quiet groan in this house?
The old highlander is afraid that he will die.



The twentieth century frowns sternly,
We are the children of the century, shame on us:
After all, never so many lies and blood
It has not been spilled in the world until now.


The twentieth century wearily squints its eyelids,
We are the children of the century, honor and praise to us:
Perhaps never, as in our century,
The world did not fight against lies and evil.



I'm not at all surprised, well -
It will be like this and it has been like this for centuries:
Poison and malice, slander and lies
They kill a person.


But I can’t understand in any way,
Why does this happen sometimes -
And love, and truth, and wine
They also kill a person.



Buddhists believe that there is no death for them,
That their soul will still be incarnated
In some other creatures of the earth -
Not into a person - but into a flower or a bird.


Whatever it is - small or big,
I, a poet, could I not strive
To become a soul during life
And a person, and a flower, and a bird.



“Oh snowy mountains and snowy field,
How did I overcome you in stormy times?”
“Isn’t that why you were able to defeat us?
That a song and a friend were next to you?


“Oh mountain river with a steep waterfall,
How could I cross your stormy stream?
“Whenever there is a song, your companion is not nearby,
You would never be able to defeat me."



I want people to give an answer
These are always questions:
“Are you cold?” - "No"
“Are you scared?” - "Not scary".


I walked through the land where there is trouble and need,
I've met people who are concerned.
“Are you cold?” - "Yes".
“Are you hungry?” - "Yes".
“Are you scared?” - "Very".



Compresses, syringes and oxygen from a tube,
Life and death fight until the morning
Bustling like a white dove
At my bedside is my sister.


O my song, written in blood,
Sometimes I think painfully:
Have you been at someone's head at least once?
Was she a merciful sister?



Our world is a ship. He is smaller and weaker
His overpowering squall.
And there are many women and children in the holds,
And there are very few who can swim.


And if hostility breaks out on board,
And if the sailor starts a fight,
What will happen to the ship, what to expect then?
To everyone who is weak, to everyone who can’t swim?



Humble yourself, Caucasus, Ermolov is coming.
A. Pushkin


No, we didn’t humble ourselves and didn’t bend our backs
Neither in those years, nor in a hundred years
Neither the mountain sons nor their peaks
At the sight of the general's epaulets.


Neither abusive cunning nor strength
Nothing to do with it. I undertake to assert:
It was not Ermolova’s Rus' that conquered us,
The Caucasus was captivated by Pushkin's Rus'.



There is a scarlet circle on your forehead
It burns like a seal on a letter, O India.
I opened the envelope and along the paths of the lines
I’m coming, I want to understand you, O India.


I see poor houses everywhere.
I received many letters, O India.
But sadder than your letter
Until now I have not read, O India.



Here is the Taj Mahal. On this old tower
In distant centuries under the moon
Songs composed by Akbar's captive
And they cried for their father's side.


Those songs have not been heard now,
Even though centuries have passed since their birth.
How long and long are the paths of sorrow!
How short the road to joy is!



They carry the groom at a wedding in Delhi,
And the musicians show agility.
My family ate sparingly for fifteen years,
Saving pennies to pay for the wedding.


And the young will still have years
Shedding sweat to get out of debt.
Sometimes the freedom of a small people
Paid for like a poor man's wedding.


* * *
If only the cruelty of man
Could turn to snow and ice
There would be eternal cold on the planet
From southern to northern latitudes.


When would human kindness become
Spring water, then always
All over the earth from edge to edge
Clear water would gurgle.



Sometimes it seems to me: I am virgin soil.
Then I bend over from the harvest,
Then I wither and dry up without giving birth
Not a spike, not a stem, not a grain.


It seems to me: - I am a grain storehouse,
It is bursting with bread at times,
Sometimes in winter only the wind howls in it.
And everyone is facing a hungry spring.



Everywhere poets grumble that poetry
People don’t appreciate and don’t understand
And mother-in-law different countries their sons-in-law
They reproach their wives for not paying attention.


Drivers all over the world curse equally
The police with the usual malice.
I realized that all the people of the earth
There are much more similarities than differences.



If only people's sympathy
It could become food for the hungry,
On the stones of Calcutta squares
There would be no emaciated beggars.


If only people's sympathy
It could become a huge roof,
Stones of Istanbul squares
Wouldn't be a home for the homeless.



Once upon a time in the old days they punished strictly
People who dared to draw people.
It was believed that only God should
Create everything mortal with your own hand.


A person has many traits that
Neither the paint nor the pattern will convey it.
After all, in the pictures there are even forests and mountains
Paler than true forests and mountains.



In Hiroshima they believe this tale:
Survives sick people
The one who will cut at least
A thousand paper cranes.


The world is sick, take thin paper,
Think about paper cranes
Don't die like that Japanese woman
With the penultimate crane in his hands.



I walked around the world for a long time.
I have seen many perfect books.
And the great planet itself -
A manuscript, or rather a draft.


How many wrong titles does it have?
How many lines contain evil!
If only all the flaws in it could be corrected,
I would like to rewrite everything completely.



They say that before creation
The word was spoken for the first time.
What was in it: an oath, a prayer?
What was in it: a request, an order?


To save the world from destruction,
Maybe we need the word now.
Let it contain an oath and a prayer,
Let it contain a request and an order.



That everything is dark around the blind,
It’s not the lack of a moon that’s to blame,
And it's not the field's fault
That the peasant does not live well.


It’s not easy for barefoot people in winter,
Should we blame the damned frost?
That human grief is great,
People themselves are to blame for this.



During class, the teacher handed me a globe.
Although sometimes I sinned with the wrong answer,
It was not cold cardboard that I pressed to my chest,
And the whole world that fits into this globe.


The world now fits in my heart,
He is all in me as he is - from shame to glory.
It is in my distant heart that thunder is heard,
And the cities are noisy, and powers are at war.



I have returned from distant travels,
And mothers of dead sons
They asked if I had met any Dagestanis
On the distant shores of foreign seas.


And I sinned with an irresponsible lie,
He said: they say, I met one fellow countryman.
And the mothers fell silent, believing vaguely,
That this is their long-lost son.



Beyond the blue ocean, in the far distance,
I saw roses of wondrous beauty,
They reminded me every time
Tsadino spring flowers.


Overseas people with different skin colors
They smiled at me often and always
I was sure they were similar
To the village residents from our Tsad.



It's been twenty years since two dear brothers
Died in a land unknown to me,
And twenty years in a dream on their graves
I, the third brother, stand and shed tears.


Having traveled all over the world, I managed to understand:
In any corner of the earth, in any country
All the people of the world are also third brothers
Dead and missing in the war.



Globe, for some you are a watermelon. In pieces
They cut you open and shred you with their teeth.
For others, you are just a ball, and, crowding, the players
They either grab you or kick you.


The globe for me is not a watermelon or a ball.
Globe, for me you are a dear face,
I'm wiping away your tears - don't cry,
I wash away your blood and sing over you.



In our mountains, so people say,
Was between the borders of allotments,
But if hail suddenly fell,
Sweeping away everything, he did not look at the boundaries.


The land is divided by borders,
But if hail or storm breaks out,
They won't ask whose fields these are,
And they won’t look where the border goes.



Blue birds fly across the sky.
I'm trying to count them from the ground;
Two, three, four, ten, twenty, thirty...
I didn’t count, everything blurred into the distance.


Like a flock of birds, the years fly over the mountains,
I count them, seeing them off into the distance:
Two, three, four, ten, twenty, forty...
And I don’t understand how big the flock is.



And again, again the black raven is looking for
Housing where smoke does not escape.
Like the messenger of death circling over the home,
Abandoned by its owner.


O people, may your home breathe prosperity,
Let peace and work illuminate him,
Let the crows not circle above the roof,
Let the swallows build nests over the roof.



I've been under a thousand constellations
I saw the world lying under the moon.
And the big world that I have traveled,
Now he follows me everywhere.


It's getting light now and I'm in the hospital.
I have been seriously ill for many days now,
And the huge world that lurks within me,
He lies with me: he hurts me more.



People strived for sunny distances
And they left mounds of graves,
They were still dying near Perekop
Those who paved the way to the stars.


Not all heroes reached distant stars,
And, Valya Tereshkova, bow down
Over Lisa's ashes and Zoya's grave,
Without them, you wouldn’t have soared.



About our land to all sublunary regions
I couldn’t tell you as much as I wanted,
I carried full khurjins with me,
But the trouble is, I couldn’t untie them.


And a sonorous song in our native dialect
I couldn’t sing about the sublunary world.
I shouldered the forged chest,
But I couldn’t open the chest.



Drops fell on the poet's cheeks.
On his right cheek and on his left.
A drop of joy, a drop of sadness.
A tear of love and a tear of anger.


Two little drops, pure and quiet,
Two drops are powerless until they merge,
But, having merged, they will turn into poetry,
And they will flash like lightning and rain down.



I saw everything, having traveled around the world:

And they told me: “There is no such thing,


I walked, I saw: they collapsed in flames
Pictures, ships and temples of God.
“There is no such thing,” they told me, “
What can’t a person do!”



Birds, having feathered, fly away,
They hurry away from their father's side.
And sometimes people die
Not on the land where they were born.


A man lives and strives into the distance,
He wants to catch up with his dream.
So he dies like a bird,
My heart was torn on the fly.



I remember I was visiting a foreign land,
I saw how poets competed,
Like each other, sparing no effort,
They tried to cover it at any cost.


This dispute was incomprehensible to me.
What a nonsense it is to cover each other's songs!
If you give in to the strong, it’s no shame
Overcoming the weak is not a merit.



There are friends who do not swear friendship,
But they are with you in your dark hour.
The feeling of friendship is sacred and not necessary
Swear allegiance every time.


There are poets who don't dare write
And they didn't write a single line...
The wise they do not understand
Those of us who, taken from the sky, peck
Stars on paper sheets.



At first I called you friend,
But you were only a selfish liar,
Then, that you are my enemy, I believed,
You turned out to be a cowardly scoundrel.


Well, I don’t cry, cursing fate,
Not knowing you today, as it used to be.
In the world, thank God, I have
And without your enmity there are many enemies!



Leave me alone, I pray,
I'm tired of the road and the noise,
I'll spread it on the grass like a burka
My cherished dream and thought.


O people, come to me,
Take me on my way - I never thought
What will be scary so alone
With my dream, with my cherished thought.



One morning my mother asked me:
“Son, tell me, will there be war again?
I saw tears in my dreams today,
I hear a noise, I closed the doors.”


“Don’t be afraid, mom, this noise or rustling
Don't let your dreams disturb you:
Then the toads croak in their rotten lakes
And they want to scare the steppe eagles.”



Morning and evening, sun and darkness -
White fisherman, black fisherman.
The world is like the sea; and it seems to me:
We are like fish swimming in the depths.


The world is like the sea; fishermen don't sleep
The nets are prepared and the hooks are set.
Is it online at night, at the bait of the day?
Will time soon catch me?



“Joy, wait, where are you flying?”
“In the heart that loves!”
“Youth, where are you in a hurry to return?”
“In the heart that loves!”


“Strength and courage, where are you going, where?”
“In the heart that loves!”
“Where are you going, sadness and trouble?”
“In the heart that loves!”



People, we get up in the morning and laugh.
Do we know what the day brings us?
The day comes, we curse and swear;
You look, and evening is already at the gates.


Our treasures are strength and courage -
The day takes away from us, leaving...
And calm maturity remains -
Burka worn after rain.



Even those who are left, maybe
Five minutes to look at the white light,
They fuss, they go out of their way,
As if they still have hundreds of years to live.


And in the distance, in the silence of a hundred centuries
Mountains, looking at noisy people,
Frozen, sad and stern,
It’s as if they only have five minutes to live.



When someone is endowed with a vice,
We judge, and we shout, and we are indignant,
We are a relic of our grandfather's times
We name all the worst vices.


That one is a careerist, and that one is a slanderer,
Cursing people in evil anonymous letters.
But what do grandfathers have to do with it? After all, our language
In those days I didn’t even know such words!



Shamil's saber was burning
The words, and I remembered them from childhood:
“He is not a brave man who is in battle
Thinks about the consequences!


Poet, let the signs of words be minted
They live next to your pen:
“He is not a brave man who is in battle
Thinks about the consequences!



I don't believe in miracles and providence,
But let death come into its own,
Let him take me into his domain
And, having taken it, he will let it go in two years.


So that, returning from the distant limit,
I could look at what was left behind,
To come back to you if you are sad,
And if not, then die again.



The cauldron is boiling, but the food is not ready,
It's not time to judge her yet.
Because the taste of khinkal or pilaf
You can't tell by the smell of a fire.


Pandur plays now stronger, now quieter,
But don’t rush to judgment, wait.
Until you heard her words,
Don't judge the song hastily.



A jamaat is convened in the village,
Let there be a holiday after difficult everyday life.
First, as expected, a report,
Then the fun: the pandur and the tambourine.


Time passes, the report drags on
About alcohol, about work, about happiness,
Not hearing the tambourine, and the pandurs are sleeping,
And people are waiting for the artistic part.



Prepare some wine, grab some crackers -
Share with a friend on the way,
Take a sharper dagger with you -
It will be easier to walk!


I went on the road, I left a long time ago,
I only took the song with me.
With friends she is crackers and wine,
With enemies she is a dagger.



"O mountain eagles, what attracts you
Here, where there is snow at any time of the year?
“We are not looking for warmth or bounty,
Here freedom gives us heights.”


“O my fellow countrymen, what attracted you
Here, where it is difficult to curb nature?
“We were brought not by goodness, not by warmth -
The height promised us freedom here!”



Let the sea speak, and you be silent,
Do not pour out either joy or sorrow.
The great Dante fell silent in the night,
When the sea splashed at his feet.


Is the shore filled with people or empty?
Let the sea sing, without echoing its waves.
And Pushkin - the greatest Chrysostom -
He was always silent while the sea sang.



I'm sitting by the window on a rainy day.
There is fog behind the glass; There are drops on the glass.
The rain pours and pours, everything is washed by the rain:
There are ridges in the distance, palaces and saklyas nearby.


Invisible behind the thick mesh
Neither what is far away, nor what is closer, -
It's raining, and besides the life lived,
When I close my eyes, I see nothing.



The poem is over. The carpet is woven.
But wait a minute to brag:
Straighten the corners, look at the pattern,
Cut off any loose threads.


The poem has been completed. Spring wedge
It's smelly, but it's yesterday's work
Look again and go through the furrow -
There are still some flaws left on the arable land.



The elders sat with their burkas pulled off their shoulders.
When I heard their speeches and disputes,
I understood that, having suddenly found speech,
The mountains spoke to each other in the same way.


When I heard children laughing in the morning,
Which resounded with joy in the distance,
I thought the rivers of my homeland
Having found speech, they would babble like this.



“You’ve forgotten how to play, zurna.
Where is the former melodiousness and strength?
“No, as of old, the song is sonorous,
It’s blocking your ears.”


“You, zurna, are not cute to me now,
You sing more indifferently than you sang.”
“I remained the same as I was,
It’s your heart that’s hardened!”



Streams rumble and waterfalls thunder,
Disappearing somewhere in the distance
Streams laugh and rivers roar,
Like tipsy poets.


Why are you making noise and laughing, water,
Leaving your land forever?..
I am always sad, I am always silent
I am leaving my native land.



A lot of feelings are bubbling in my chest,
Still not separated from anyone.
There are a lot of words sleeping in my chest
Better than words already spoken.


Growing up to be the envy of all flowers
I keep my dear flower under wraps.
The gold that I will still give away
I'm hiding it in a secret place for now.



The poet wrote poems to his wife:
“You are my light, and star, and dawn.
When you're near, it's sweet to me,
It’s sad when I don’t see you!”


But here is the wife - the star and the light -
She appeared and stood at the threshold.
“You are here again,” cried the poet, “
Let me work, for God’s sake!”



Big love song
It's never too big.
The feeling is brief at times
It makes for a long speech.


Having made a circle, the steppe eagle
Flies into the clouds.
To tweet every day,
A sparrow arrives.



It's not hard to shed tears in grief,
But it is more difficult to hold back tears in times of trouble.
It's easy to curse the past
It is more difficult to tell truthfully about him.


Like guests, the years come to our house,
And so it happens - who is to blame? –
We greet guests with praise, and then
We brand and curse behind our backs.



Hey, man with a wide back,
Go away, don't stand in front of my window
Don't block out the light of day,
Go away, don't stand in front of my window.


There in the world there are mountains of snowy whiteness,
There in the sea there is a sail in the haze of the day,
And I can only see the shadow of your back,
Go away, don't stand in front of my window!



If days are tree trunks,
Human life is a forest.
How much has been destroyed, how much has not yet been cut down?
Trees in my forest?


If the day is one race,
Human life is a whole herd.
How many of them have fled, and how many are still left?
Horses in my herd?



Here I am by the fireplace in my grandfather’s house,
Where the fire hasn't been lit for a long time,
Who once sat and talked here,
They are unlikely to return here.


But in the darkness sleepy stones darken,
And the men sit in a semicircle,
Illuminated by my memory,
Like the old fireplace flame.



You cry in vain, jealous of me,
It's unfair that you reproach me.
Maybe I’ll remember that other one,
When you hurt me.


Believe, it’s not her - even though you don’t praise her -
Plays an evil role in my destiny.
She only remembers me then
When someone else hurts her.



It seems to me that everything is fading and growing old.
Everything I like, everything I don't like,
Everything is destroyed day by day,
Everything changes except me.


Life sobers us up from time to time,
Age punishes us from time to time:
It hurts when you suddenly notice
How your peer and friend has aged.



Mountain river is stupid water,

Why are you rushing there?
Where is there a lot of water without you?




Why are you drawn there?



“Early guests don’t stay long,” -
This is what our people say.
Love appeared in my garden this morning,
It’s already evening and she doesn’t leave.


“I gave you, guest, bread and wine,
Go quickly, don’t hesitate!”
“I am not your guest, I have been your hostess for a long time,” -
She answers with a grin.




With a letter on blotting paper,
Where it is very easy to spot the signs,
But they are far from easy to read.


What should I compare my love to? God knows!
With the initial whisper of the ashug,
When he sings without making a sound,
When there are no words yet, but there is a song.



I just thought: no now
The daring that once reigned here,
As if in an Andean burka past us
A mustachioed horseman flew dashingly by.


Maybe I'm not entirely right
And the matter is not so hopeless...
Those who walked nearby told me:
“It was the financial department inspector!”



Don’t be sad, Kumyk and Estonian,
That your people are not large in number.
Can be seen from small windows
Ocean and big continent.


May he not be generously endowed with space
Father's land since time immemorial,
The depths may be vast
Low destroyed mountains!



Why prevaricate when more than once
Has it ever happened that we made concessions?
Time bent us, time beat us,
We did small things.


Let life be difficult and unfulfilling,
Take me to any troubles,
But don't say goodbye, Great Country,
You don't do any of us small things.



“Where, mountain girl, are your outfits,
Why are you walking around in an old scarf?
“I’m not happy with my outfits,
They are all in the chest."


“Why should they, mountain girl, hesitate,
Is that what they are for?
“The one for whom I would dress up,
Didn’t come back to me from the war!”



I am on earth, as in the sea, I float up,
Then I go down, where I can’t see anything.
I say some words
And instead of them there is only foam and circles.


We are on earth when things get tough,
Like in a sea where no ships sail,
We are floating and there is no life preserver,
No lighthouse, no shore in the distance.



People, why are you so slow?
Turtles are stingy with their movements,
Their slowness is not surprising:
Turtles live for a hundred years, no less!


People, why are you so fast?
Are you jumping like hares in an open field?
Their haste is not surprising:
Hares live only five years, no more.



Waving a wide handkerchief over the ground,
The sunrise greets us in the morning.
Waving a wide handkerchief over the ground,
The sunset gives us a farewell sign.


It seems to me: bending closer to the ground,
Not the sun - I myself melt the sky
And, falling lower, in the red light
Through my tears I see my former sunrise.



The heart of a horseman is a burning fire.
Girl, be careful:
You can put out the fire, ruin it,
You can get burned by a spark.


The heart of a horseman is a sharp dagger.
Girl, be careful:
You can drop the dagger, blunt it,
You can hurt your hand.



There are such peaks and slopes -
From morning to sunset their light illuminates them.
There are such gorges and elephants,
Where only reflected light penetrates.


O my sun, golden luminary,
Whose slope, whose home have you illuminated?
In what gorge at the bottom I settled,
Why hasn’t your light reached me yet?



I feel sorry for the guy: the rain is getting heavier,
The rain is so bad that it won't stop by nightfall.
Should a guy with his sweetheart
Yes, apparently, we won’t have to meet.


I feel sorry for the girl: at her gates
She is waiting, the girl is not laughing.
The rain is pouring, and the darling is not coming.
Is the rain a problem for him?



If the men of the mountains
Would have wings
That among the eagle mountains
They would be eagles.


If we have women
Would have wings
My Caucasus would be famous
Doves - not eagles.



What should I do with my heart? It
I submitted to your will,
Now it’s hard for you to deal with him,
And even more so for me.


Like a child, she took my heart
You've been in my hands recently.
But you couldn't hold him
And me even more so.



There are plenty of streams and rivers in the mountains,
The streams and rivers have clean water.
They drank water from streams and rivers
Flocks of clouds and herd clouds.


I was waiting for you, listening, was it you
You go to streams where there is clean water.
But you didn't go to the streams. They hurried to the streams
Flocks of clouds and herd clouds.



From the clouds of leaden white flock
Snow flies on an April day,
But, seeing the earth, it melts,
Flies to her in the rain.


I'm on a steep path to you
Shel is an angry man
And melted before you,
How the snow melts in April.



And again the rock by the sea cries in the rain,
I can’t understand what she’s talking about.
The rock is not a woman, but how much grief
She had a chance to see forever!


The spring field laughs awake,
Playing leapfrog with the warm wind.
What is it about? Although the field is not a child,
What does this field know about trouble?



In our village for more than one century
The snake of a small river winds.
Once upon a time there were children splashing in it
Now gray-haired old men.


And this river runs through meadows and slopes,
Forgetting about time, to our envy,
Flying, murmuring, laughing like a child,
It rings, babbles, jumps over the stones.



The children are crying, but we can't
Ask them and understand why.
I'm grieving today too
Why, I myself don’t understand.


The wind is howling pitifully,
The rain is not going right.
The sun doesn't shine in the sky,
Your voice isn't quite right.



I'm lying on the grass. From afar I
I look at the village in the evening.
Lights flicker in the distance -
This one caught fire, that one went out.


Many lights flicker red,
Lots of gold shimmers.
Some glow, others go out,
Like the hearts of my comrades.



Even unnoticeable grains of sand
They will wipe your leg until it bleeds on the way,
They will fall into the charms or into the boots -
Shake it out, otherwise you can’t go.


I, my friend, your poems to the point
I couldn’t finish reading, I said: “Fire me.”
Awkward words and lines,
Like grains of sand, they hurt.



In the village, having found a higher place,
I built a hut and tore up the grass by the roots.
Built, lived, and the grass is on the roof
It grows and seems to whisper: “I live!”


No matter how you pluck it into the grass, it will rise again
Not under your feet, but above your head.
And I said my favorite song:
“Be like, song, like mountain grass.”



My heart is a festive table,
Where the feast is always spilled,
I called a friend, and my friend came,
You came unexpectedly, uninvited.


And we stood before you, young one,
Like a ceremonial toast.
You have become a hostess, a toastmaster,
And I myself am just a guest.



I thought the trees were in snow-white bloom,
And as I drove closer, the trees were covered in snow.
I thought you would be loving and tender,
I'm in trouble, but I can't leave.


I rushed along the paths of the mountain region
And I didn’t take my cloak, but it was raining in the gorges.
My darling, my icy one,
Tell me what to do, warm me, have mercy!



Since we met on earth,
The evil snowfalls have calmed down,
These flowers grow in February,
How we searched when we first met.


All year round in the gardens spring is white and white
It drops its color from the apple trees onto our shoulders.
I remember: it was winter on earth
One last time before our first meeting.



“Why am I sad that you are quiet?
My travel companion, my new friend?
Who moved his hat from his thick eyebrows,
Did you suddenly stop mid-sentence?


So I asked a friend in the evening,
And my friend leaned against the window:
“There is a mountain beyond that distant mountain,
And behind it is my native village.”



Like shepherds, peaks at dawn
In big hats of white clouds,
And streams in the snow ring like children,
Freed from the icy shackles.


You can barely hear the indistinct ringing of a drop,
And in the hut on the bed, against the wall,
The sick old man sighs: “Really?
Will there be no more spring on earth?



Love, let's compare ourselves to a pandur!
I am the pandura tree, you are the string...
He should be neither joyful nor gloomy,
He's dead until it sounds.


Love, let's compare ourselves to a dagger!
You are the blade, and I am your sheath.
I'm lightweight and pathetic without you,
Empty scabbards are not needed!



Your words are good words,
They hit my heart,
Like ten-kopeck pieces thrown into the water,
Shiny at the very bottom.


And the timid one is reflected
Your tears are in my eyes,
Like a white partridge in a river,
What hides in the thick bushes.



People say around me that I'm too lazy in love,
People around me say that I walked a lot.
With one, they say, and with the other, they say,
I sinned, they say, adding “It happened!”


Don't believe me, I didn't sin, I didn't know how to sin
Ever since I can remember, darling,
You were the only one I loved and pitied,
Even though I still don’t know who you are.



My neighbor, squinting his brown eyes,
He spoke, we listened to the story.
Suddenly an old mountain weed with jugs
She limped heavily past us.


And then the old man, crumpling his story,
Look at that old woman to the corner
He saw her off and whispered after her:
“How good she was!”



My love is plane tree - two trunks.
One has withered, the other is covered with leaves.
My love is an eagle - two wings,
One takes off, another falls.


Two wounds in my chest hurt.
One is bleeding, the other is scarring.
And it’s always like this: joy is ahead,
Then again sadness hurries, replacing it.



I am a cheerful person
I am sad because of your bad will.
When a blizzard pours snow in winter,
She bends a poplar in an open field.


I'm far from a cheerful person,
But I am warmed by your radiant warmth.
When spring dispels the darkness,
The poplar comes to life again in a clean field.



I don't want to sing you a lullaby,
So that you sleep peacefully,
I want to stand over your bed
And stand until daylight.


I will be on a long autumn night
Silently keep your peace.
A maple bending over a sleeping valley,
Quiet rock above the river.




I'm afraid to write poetry. Suddenly, having read them,
Another, more worthy and younger than me,
He will love you too, in earnest.


I'm talking about you, who is dearest to me,
I'm afraid to write. Suddenly loving someone
He will talk to another, his beloved too,
With the words that I found for you.



You're right, I'm getting darker over the years
We don't have what we used to have.
I used to share everything with you
The joy that youth gave me.


Believe me, I haven’t become worse, at least I’m sharing
And not everyone is with you, as in the beginning,
I'm just afraid of upsetting you,
Sharing my sorrows with you!



Say the word, look at me
Give me a sign - I will climb to the top,
If you say so, I will throw myself into the arms of fire,
I will throw myself into the depths of the sea.


I'll walk halfway around the world.
I will glorify your name, dear.
I'll do anything, just you lead me
Yes, kiss, seeing off.



If love were at the bottom
I would throw it into the sea
It would dry out
Fishermen on the mountain.


If only my passion took
This expanse has no edge,
It would have burned to the ground
The whole land is native.



Tall grasses of the native land
The July sun burns to the ground.
And I, like grass, wither and burn,
At least I miss your warmth.


The July shower will cause the wheat to wilt,
Bottom turbidity floats on the lake.
And I would like to get drunk, and I would like to get drunk,
And I would drown in bottomless eyes.



Couples kissing under the old cherry trees,
I hear an indistinct whisper in the evening.
Oh, the first meetings and vows are barely audible,
You are already far away, but you are still understandable!


Spring cherry blossoms, moonless nights,
Those nights when we are pure and winged,
In the squares the young trees have grown old,
Where I once whispered my first vows.



When evening used to fall,
Throwing a fur coat over huge rocks,
Wrapping your sheepskin coat around my shoulders,
My father lifted me to the roof.


The gray hairs are turning white at my temples,
But it seems I'm still looking
Wrapped in father's sheepskin,
All from the same roof to the vast mountains.



"Hey, beautiful, I don't understand
Why are you looking sad and stern?”
“To go out to your friend,
No scarf, no expensive dress!”


“Well, what about you, ugly girl, why are you sad?
Is your shawl new, does the silk sparkle?”
“What is silk, why do I need a shawl,
If there is no one for me to dress up for.”



A long time ago, on my own mountain,
I dedicated my first verse to you,
You laughed and got married soon:
My husband is a high-ranking policeman.


I became a poet. Do you think this
By my own merit. What can I say?
When you can create poets
Teach your wife to write poetry.



Mountain river is stupid water,
Here the rocks crack without moisture,
Why are you rushing there?
Where is there a lot of water without you?


Heart, heart, I'm in trouble with you,
Why don’t you want to love those who love?
Why are you drawn there?
Where are you and I not really needed?



I’m not writing this to amuse
My beloved song.
I want friends in battle
My song helped me fight.


I’m not writing this to amuse
My song of tipsy guests.
I want my homeland
My song helped me to work.



Awakened by love at dawn,
I write poems about my dear, but she
I am indifferent to them, and in these moments
Lying in the arms of sweet sleep.


I don't lay my head on my pillow all night,
I write in anger, cursing my enemy,
And the enemy is having fun at the party,
Without even remembering me.



“Hey, cat, where are you going again?”
“I’m running from the dog that’s chasing me!”
“Hey, dog, who’s making you run?”
“The hunting whistle and the tramp of a horse!”


“Hey, horse, why are you running so fast?”
“The rider’s whip rises above me!”
“Why have you been in a hurry all this time, man?”
“Time is clawing at me, trumpeting behind me!”



“One leg of a lie is fiery,
The second ice is tested in a mortal matter.
How come you didn’t get charred, tell me
Our souls? Aren’t you frozen?”


“Raising a shield over the human soul,
Truth stretched out her hand ardently
And grabbed it with an icy hand
Lie short-legged by the throat!



“Look: he is gray as the heights of the mountains,
And he chose the role of an inveterate liar!”
“Whose father is he? Another shame
My son will bear the brunt of this.”


“Look: he’s young, but like a mother,
Lies are told with demonic cunning!”
“Whose son is he? Another shame
It will fall on his father’s head.”



If you are faithful to the covenants of friendship,
I would like to know why
You tuned the strings at the same time
On the pandura of my enemy?


The skies above the mountains are united
For both the raven and the eagle.
But not once, even though an eternity has passed,
The peaks have not seen them together.


ADVICE
TO THE YOUNG POET


Listen, my friend, to a sensible man
And, like a saber, with the stroke of a pen
Cut off the empty half yourself
From the poems I wrote yesterday.


Do you remember how you hung from being wounded?
Alibek has a brave hand,
And he cut it off in the heat of battle,
So as not to interfere, with the lightning of the blade.



I am a plowman, and I remember hearing a story,
That, having gone waist-deep into the clouds,
The whole globe will recline, resting
On the horns of the universal bull.


And today the world is so alarming,
What appeared under the moon:
Reclining, resting precariously,
The entire globe is on the bull's horns.



Isn’t it time, Emelyan Pugachev,
Announce on par with Salavat
Good luck to you Shamil
Companion or brother?


You threatened the queen's throne,
And in the country you were crowned with glory.
And Shamil, even though he fought with the Tsar,
It was as if he was in disgrace.



Shamil did not give courage to offend,
And they sewed it on so that the shame would be known,
In the mountains, ass to the cowardly murid
A piece of felt, as the imam commanded.


Hey, timid poets,
If only the glorious command would live,
It was sewn to the ass for order
Each of you has a piece of felt.



Together under the stars, as if under lamps,
Allah and I are sitting talking.
Then we agree with him,
We argue and disagree!


Frowning, he reproaches me for my sins,
And I bow my head in sadness,
But I say, sighing: “Oh, Allah!
Are you always fair?”


FROM AUTOBIOGRAPHY


The Muse appeared at my mercy,
But the devil blew into everything inside -
And it was as if I had fallen into an abyss
My immortal pen.


I sighed: “What a shame,
After all, it was here yesterday.”
And Muse was happy
My pen is missing.



No one will judge us for our mercy
Today and tomorrow.
If my anger is swift,
I'll end up in dust under the mountain.


Show, my soul, zeal,
Reliable, for any time
May mercy give me advice,
So that my tent stands on the mountain.



Are you happy that for many years
You live calmly, without arguing with storms,
You don't know your friends, that is, you never
You cannot share joy and sorrow with anyone.


But even if you lived a hundred years
And the head, like wisdom, turned gray,
I boldly tell you in public,
That you haven't been born yet.



“Do not be afraid of enemies, poet! Take a look
There are so many of your faithful friends everywhere!”
“And if on Black Day they change?”
"Don't be afraid! My wife won’t leave me in trouble!”


“What if my wife cheats?” - "Nothing!
There are father’s mountains in the dawn smoke.”
“What is there to be afraid of then?” - “One:
Dangerous betrayal of yourself!”


THIRD WHEEL


What doesn't happen in our summers?
And I still haven’t forgotten
How two poets feuded
And how the third one reconciled them.


Past fights are forgotten
And both, what a blessing,
They united in the fight
And they began... to quarrel with the third.



No matter how you touch the strings, I will remain gloomy
If the roar of the sea is not echoed by Chungur.
No matter how you sing the song, the words in it are cold,
When the grass does not rustle in them in the wind.


And he is not an artist, even though he made it into the world,
Who has not yet created your portrait.
And the book is destined to have a short life,
When she kept silent about you.



My song, side by side with lies
Neither to the top nor to the bottom
Don't fly in a circle for a while,
Know: there is only one step to the abyss.


My song, in the name of honor
Don't feast with lies together,
The sky will throw thunder at you,
You'll be lost in no time!



“Everything in the world is bad and there is no order!” -
The poet said and left the white light.
“It’s a beautiful world,” said another poet
And he left the white light in his prime.


The third parted with time dashingly,
Known as great, not subject to death.
Everything that is bad, he called bad,
And what is beautiful, he called beautiful.



"Hide me, darling,
I'm frozen with fear.
What should I do, tell me?
Have pity on your son..."


“Shave your mustache, my son,
Throw away the dagger and hat,
Wrap yourself in my scarf
And go to your grave quickly.”



“Come with me, horseman!” - "Where?"
“I would tie your mouth with a sore mouth.
When you rush to ask “where?” -
It’s better to stay at home!”


“Come with me, horseman!” - "Went!"
"Let there be the faithful and the troublesome
At any hour, at any distance
You have a friend who is ready for anything!”



“Why are you looking from under your brows, my friend,
Is the village bad? - “Isn’t he bad?
The tombstones look askance at the cemetery,
There are thistles growing around the graves.”


“How do you like the village, my friend?”
“He is worthy of the kindest rumors:
It whitens the stones in his native cemetery
And no grass grows on graves.”



Reaching divine heights
And reflecting the signs of your days,
The artists managed to paint on canvas
Transfer biblical stories.


I write in verse, overwhelmed by love,
I am your image, although this is prohibited
Long ago, as the Koran laid down,
But my passion is stronger than his prohibition.


Under the moon


I'm not the best out of thousands of others,
But once you met me,
I imagined it was under the moon
Out of a thousand, I am better than the rest.


I'm not the worst of a thousand, believe me,
But you are blinded by my guilt,
And therefore out of a thousand now
I seem to you to be the worst under the sun.



Like a lit candle
That woman appeared before me,
And at her, as if standing in front of a wall,
I'm looking over your shoulder.


I would make a date under the moonlight
The owner of a captivating look,
But between this woman and me
You are an insurmountable obstacle.



If you are a man, legitimize
And make it public everywhere,
That a man's heart is a horse,
Jumping in the mountains above the abyss.


Woman, can you confirm for me -
This is not fiction, but the truth, -
What floats in a woman's chest
The cradle rocks smoothly.




And maybe really from a love call
Until a rainy day and tear-stained eyes
Everything is so original and new for you,
Even though it’s happened a thousand times before.”



Spring days have arrived
Again the birds burst into the oak groves,
They don't know anything
About the great illness of the state.


I was once careless myself,
Looking like a cheerful bird.
Today I will listen to other voices,
And a tear burns the page.



Why don't you come to me today?
Poems not born out of fear?
- Are we from the sparrow tribe?
To soar when the falcon is not on high?


Love that was abandoned in fear
Forgive and come back, forgetting about sadness.
- I’m a star, you’ll hardly appreciate it
My arrival now, if the darkness has disappeared!



I was in blood debt
Endowed.
And fight
Tore with old enemies
Honored by comrades.


And I didn't think I was capable
In the land of my kindred
A faithful friend, like an evil enemy,
Shoot me in the back.



Oh radio, don’t anger God,
Giving me an eight-minute deadline,
So that the eight chosen ones in love
On March 8th I could confess.


Eight minutes is not enough for them
Or will I get by with just a minute?
Isn’t it enough for me to have eight women?
Or maybe one is too much for me?



I was not a poet when from the top
I whispered your name in love.
And a song from that memorable time
It has a reputation for floating over the pass.


Say a lot, having become a poet,
I was destined to sing melodious words,
But isn't your name in this world
Is there a better thing that I have said?



At the foot of the mountains and near the peaks
Merging,
worthy of kinship,
Midday skies ultramarine,
The midday sea is blue.


Through distance,
don't frown on the clouds
And throw up a white sail in front of me...
What an inescapable azure,
What an amazing blue.



- Why are you frowning as if from an illness?
“I was offended by the one who is dearest to me.”
- And you generously forgive your friend,
Also, believe me, he will atone for his sin.


- It would be better if he offended me,
Who was reputed to be an enemy and honestly hated,
In sadness I would not lower my wings,
But a friend offended - the white light is not nice.



Comrades of my distant days,
Peers who have lived so little!..
I guess I survived
So that the memory on earth does not die.


Fallen friends on the battlefield -
There were many of you who passionately loved life.
I know: I am the only one alive,
To tell about you, so few who lived.



On unknown platforms
I'm getting out of the car
On short stops:
Suddenly I see you!


In distant lands unknown,
At foreign airfields
I go out: suddenly I see her,
What looks like you!..



Life is capricious. We are all in her power.
We grumble and scold life.
...The more difficult it is, the more dangerous it is -
The more desperately you love her.


I'm walking the hard road
Holes, ruts - just hold on!
But no one came up with it, by God,
Nothing is more beautiful than life.



People dream about everything: joy, sadness
And lasting peace at home...
But let only our meetings
No one dreams of it.


Let no one talk about you and me
Doesn't know what's around -
About our happiness, our pain
And the first sound of the song...



The bigger and brighter the spring -
The more fun the birds sing.
But their song must cease,
As soon as the earth turns white.


The snow is heavier on the porch
And the more hopeless the bad weather is -
The more tremulous the singer's songs,
The more warmth and passion they have.



My friend doesn't write me letters
My friend doesn't write me letters.
I write letters to myself
It's like a friend is writing to me.


I read letters to neighbors
I read letters to neighbors -
Wonderful kind letters,
Which my friend doesn't write to me.



I woke up at dawn -
Not a single cloud in the sky.
And yesterday there was rain and wind,
The world was all in tears of grief.


Who is so high, high
Rising to the sky with a broom
And swept away in the blink of an eye
A sky shrouded in darkness?



Blurred contours of rocks -
The day is foggy and hazy from dawn.
He came to us, descended, arrived,
But he left the sun somewhere.


He looks like a horse in the darkness
Returning from the battlefield
Leaving the rider lying on the ground
No movement...



If I speak in my house, I speak to you,
And when I am silent, I speak to the blue earth,
I speak to our age and to the world when I am silent,
I turn to my native mountains, and to the wave, and to the ray...


And on the way I talk to the universe - when I say,
And when I am silent, it means that I am hovering next to you
And I’m talking to you alone - not to the vastness of the seas,
With my morning song and my evening tale...



Sometimes I look like a wave that flies,
He rushes forward, destroying all obstacles,
He rushes and hurries, as if he is about to
She will accomplish great things on land.


But suddenly - headlong back, not hiding the fear:
Is it possible to live like this, disconnected from the sea?!
Sometimes, Dagestan, I lose strength,
When I don't lean on your rock.



My sad neighbor, you are talking about
How lucky I am in everything - fate is with me, they say, mercy...
Don't say that: I met evil
So often that you never even dreamed of it...


My happy neighbor, you say
About my sorrows, about my troubles, about my sadness...
Don't say that - there's more kindness,
What I have met in life, you have hardly met.



Damn you, my dagger, from its sheath
I will snatch you away until the hour of tears and troubles.
Damn you, my verse, know that you are insignificant,
When you just sing with an empty soul...


And be damned twice, if in the hour of cruel battle,
My dagger, you will rest on the wall.
And be cursed twice, in the days of terrible trials,
My verse, if you stay away...



Burdened with sorrows, fight
With you, nightingale, I can’t...
Your tune cannot merge with my tune -
Who did not know the melancholy of branches in the snow.


You desire a warm land in azure,
The harsh slope of my mountains is dear to me,
Where in the darkness and cold they sang on pandur -
What was created from a withered branch...



What is beautiful in the mountains - I take Dagestan beyond:
This, they say, is what we have and what we are rightfully proud of.
I bring beauty in a foreign land to the borders of Dagestan:
But this is what they supposedly do for man’s glory.


There are no bad peoples in the world - I know this in practice...
Give everyone your love generously - both tenderness and friendship.
There is no language in the world in which songs are not sung,
Listening to this music of life - throw down your weapons!..



Every home should be a home,
The road must be a road.
And a horn is a horn, and a verse is a verse,
And don’t touch these truths.


There is no fire in the hearth - trouble,
Whatever the reason.
A horse must always be a horse
A man must be a man.



Remember, the song that makes you shake
It is inappropriate in the same cart with lies:
Will push you off the cart on a steep path -
You'll break your neck sliding into the abyss.


Remember, song, don’t build housing,
Having become friends with deception, for nothing in the world:
The roof will leak in the spring -
And the walls will collapse, only the wind will blow.



May. The grasses are rising higher.
A gray-haired woman is standing on the roof - her son was killed in the war...
Another one wanders wearily from the spring,
His bride did not become his wife... His son was killed in the war...


Children laugh, like everywhere else in the world,
Children born not to him laugh... His son was killed in the war...
Spring, fields, and songs, and flocks,
Everyone is without him - both young and old... My son was killed in the war...



I need a hundred-ringing bell,
So that in the bottomless heights
He sang about sleepless joy,
When you come to me.


I need a huge bell
So that at night and in the middle of the day
Humming about irrepressible sadness,
When you leave me.



The wind rushes into the house from the open air,
Penetrates through windows and doors.
Our disagreements and disputes
We let you in from the street, believe me.


Neither snow nor summer rain enters the room
They don’t fly off: it’s warm and light here.
These conversations, these gossips
From the street: we don’t have them at home...



Morning of my life! Don't measure
How much I rejoiced with my friends.
The evening of my life! Don't believe it
How I yearned alone...


Sky, don’t light up the stars, you better
Let them disappear without a trace...
And don't torment me with stories
About friends gone forever...



The father was happy and the neighbors were happy,
When I appeared on earth.
Surely there is a new highlander in the world -
This is a significant event in the village.


Oh, how can I live and sing, please tell me,
I think everything not in jest, but seriously:
So that that joy is never darkened,
What did I bring with my birth...



My heart is on fire, my heart is on fire...
I don’t have wings - what should I do with my heart?..
I have wings, I feel them behind me,
How high are the ridges that stand before me!..


I conquered mountains, flew over mountains...
The sea is humming with space: is there a limit to it?..
The paths of love are hard, there are no more difficult roads -
How many barriers are in front of her... How many barriers are in front of her...



Father's shoulders... I remember those days like now:
When, as a boy, I climbed on you, like on rocks,
And from above I saw everything that the fathers showed us,
And I saw other beginnings, other ends...


Father's shoulders... I walked around the earthly expanse,
But the same cliffs are still just as strong below me...
And I see everything that the fathers showed in the distance,
I also see what the fathers could not see...



There is no tastier bread in the whole world,
Than baked by a mother for her son...
There is no fire in the world hotter and brighter,
Than the mother lit in the darkness of the fireplace.


There is no more beautiful mother's song,
With my soul consonant and consonant.
There is a high light on all her love:
I think about my mother all the time...



People - we are bags, exactly bags,
And the Earth is a loaded cart.
White horse and black - Day and Night -
They carry this burden year after year.


Along the paths, where there are holes and turns,
On a steep and uneven road,
So that at the end of the road those bags
Pour into one huge chest.



You sang on the high rocks with a tambourine in your hands -
Since childhood, that song has sunk into my soul forever.
Sang, frozen on the roof, with a baby in her arms,
In my heart this song is alive - it has not disappeared...


You sang a song, bending over the gravestones...
My cranes rush and fly into distant distances...
There is no end to your songs in the infinity of days,
With the change of centuries, everything sounds as it has always sounded.



Among the rocks of these formidable children are born:
Some die in infancy, some remain.
But those that remain remain forever,
In hats pulled low over their eyebrows.


O my land, accustomed to the tunes of pandur,
How many of your sonorous strings have been broken,
How many unsung melodies have been forgotten,
But those that remain remain forever.



I fell in love - give me a horse!
There are no barriers for me from now on.
Give me the dagger - in my hands
His steel will soften at that very moment.


I fell in love - let me sing, I pray!
I’ll sing so hard that I’ll stun the world!..
I wish I could live just one more day -
Death cannot frighten me...



O moon, who cut you in half?
Half floats in the skies between the luminaries.
And the other one - exactly the same, clearly appears to me -
Floats on the surface of the sea in silence...


I don’t understand where the original is, where the translation is...
But in all languages ​​you stay all night long
Millions read - eyes and hearts -
And they just can’t finish reading it to the end.



Lost in thought, I walk along the forest path,
Under the rustle of grass in the evening, half asleep.
And suddenly - a transparent pond in front of me,
Surrounded by forest trees.


It was as if I woke up... And below
I see the same trees as in the forest,
But I can’t touch the trunks on the move...
My dreams are those trees in the pond...



Probably our earth is not round:
After all, her paths are too crooked!
One wants to carry her on his shoulders,
The other tramples her arrogantly.


Probably our earth does not rotate -
Get into her position:
Who pulls forward, who pushes back -
And they just get in the way by circling.



I'm in the mountains where the fog spreads,
I saw, looking at the spiral of the path:
There's a donkey ahead. Behind him is a ram.
A horse and a man walk behind.


On the roads of different countries
Sometimes I see this picture:
There's a donkey ahead. Behind him is a ram.
Horses and people are somewhere behind.



Death itself does not frighten me:
It’s just that I haven’t finished singing the main song yet
And my beloved until the last day
I didn’t have time to say a real word...


And neither the world nor the time I will finish
I didn’t have time to tell you about you, Dagestan,
One cunning, one scoundrel
Failed to besiege, failed to punish...



In a woman, tell me what the hell
Do you attach special importance?
- A woman is on top in everything,
I accept everything - without exception.


They ask: - Most of all
Tell me, what do you like in a man?
- Decorates his courage,
And he is famous for his love for a woman.



I promise myself to remain silent about illnesses,
Remembering one beautiful woman...
Let me grow old - “Well, what’s wrong with that?..” -
I whisper, remembering the distant spring.


Even if I die, I won’t forget that train,
In which I rode with you for three days.
Let there be frost and waist-deep snowdrifts -
But I was the only one sitting by the fire...



Many talented poets
Time has forgotten because
What is in their songs, sung with inspiration,
There was no Caucasus of its own.


And many fearless warriors
Already forgotten by time:
They were not steely, brave,
Neither father nor mother in the soul...


MEMORY


They attacked me with loud barking
Dogs from almost all over the village:
Found some good fun
A pack of dogs in broad daylight!


“Don't be scared! - my father told me. -
They will squabble among themselves,
Yes, and they will obediently drag themselves to you,
Licking the wounds, in the end...”



Years pass. And snow from above
They fly over the old and the small
And the green ones hide our dreams
Under your white blanket.


But happiness lies elsewhere... It has been the custom from time immemorial -
The snow will inevitably melt,
To our heirs - and this is the law -
Our hopes will remain.



I drank one glass - the melody appeared,
I drank the second glass - it flowed and lasted.
And the third time I drank - and the song began to tremble.
He drank again - the song ran away in fear.


Then I decided to ask the empty glass for a glass:
Where is the music, tell me, what happened to the melody?
The glass answered: the song is barefoot and undressed,
Drunk and sick, moaning faintly somewhere.



The rain does what it wants
Try touching him!
The wind is blowing everywhere,
Like a horse without a bridle.


You, man, are not the wind,
Not rain - your words:
Let the heart dictate them
And the head rules.



Who knows me better than myself?
Liars, inspiredly flattering me to my face?
Who knows me better than myself?
Villains whistling behind my back?


I am my own prosecutor and judge,
And I heal my own illnesses.
All wounds will be healed - I'm sure -
My years, my poems and songs.



There is a battle banner
Each regiment has
Keeps it in battles
Soldier's hand.


There is a battle banner
Every singer has
I keep love like a banner
Until the end.



Oh birds, what is your song about, tell me?
- It's been about chicks since time immemorial.
- Trees, why are you trembling so much?
- From fear that the heads will be cut off by an ax.


Oh children, who are you always calling?
- Of course, mom - always and now.
- Wheels, tell me about your concern!
- The weather and the route are our two concerns.



I'll talk to myself first,
Then I will talk to you,
And if you accept my words,
Then I will turn to Dagestan.




Draw my father so I can see it with my own eyes
I saw him - not with a pen in his hand,
And those passing through the gorges at night
With an unquenchable lantern in hand.


And draw my mother, but not somewhere
At the hearth, at the spring in the mountains,
And wandering around the world
With a newborn life in your arms...



Life is not eternal! - the stones assure
Falling and sliding into the abyss.
Like stones rolling into the abyss,
Years of life repeat this.


The rain is knocking on the window - isn't it for you?
The rain knocks like a bird's beak.
Life is eternal!.. Life will last forever -
This is how we think from the cradle.



The rain has not yet broken upon us,
And I’m looking for both a burka and a hat.
The flames have not yet flared up,
And I'm ready to rip my shirt off.


Those who suddenly met a snake in the summer,
In winter, a simple rope was feared...
And I saw ropes this summer,
That they turned out to be snakes in winter.



Not a single son died from
That he followed his father's commandment.
Cutting down an old trunk last summer
He died when he accidentally fell under it.


He didn't do anything stupid
Who listened to their mother's advice?
Carried away by the seething stream last summer
The one who covered his ears with his fingers.



At any time - in the sun and in the fog,
And at any hour from dawn to dawn
Ask: how does he live, your Dagestan?
And I will give you three different answers.


One is in dreams, but there are no melodies in them,
The other is in love, but is not connected with thoughts.
Only the third - together in a good moment
He merged love, music, and reason...



Yes, you left, you won,
The dispute was not easy.
I force myself
The reproach assigned to you...


Disarmed skillfully
And she disappeared, not loving me.
I shoot arrows at myself,
What I have prepared for you.



The pine tree remains in the forest
Green and winter.
That I am young and green,
It seems to me sometimes.


In mountain river gorges
They also seethe under the ice.
I read my poems
In youthful grief.



I’ll say the word, I’ll repeat it again, -
And heaven and earth will merge...
What a stubborn thing love is!
She laughs at me...


I will say a word - his power is great:
A wave takes off in the sky...
What a stubborn thing passion is:
She considers herself a god!



Life passes - both days and evenings...
Corrects yesterday's mistakes
Life goes by. “Where were you yesterday?” -
The same question is repeated.


"Where were you yesterday?" - persistently wife
The reveler asks her husband in a rage...
Life passes... “Where have you been?” - she repeats...
When will I answer her? When?



In lead rains, in blazing fire and in blood
The brave men defended Akhulgo peak for a hundred days...
I've been defending the pinnacle of love all my life
And I don’t give in to her either in trouble or in sorrow.


Not like a two-headed eagle - a hundred-headed eagle with its
Unprecedented power will not be able to rise here,
This peak will not hand over children as hostages,
And the white flag is not allowed to fly over it.



A cart rolls down the slope of days...
The cart of your aspirations drags upward:
Aspirations - how cruel fate is to them! -
They are the ruins of former fortifications...


And now the wing hangs helplessly,
And joy flies past like a bird:
The belated epiphany has come
Like a dream - elusive...



About the past years that have flown by,
I'm not worried about my health.
But sometimes pain comes to the heart:
A new day will come or not?...


I’m not sad about the songs I haven’t sung, -
Someone will sing them sometime, somewhere...
But on an autumn day the soul languishes:
Will the rain never stop?..



Someone comes to see me. And from the doorway
He greets and walks back and forth.
Looks around carefully and sternly
And he puts his hands powerfully on my chest...


You're probably a doctor, sparing no effort,
Do you care about me - from night to night?
- No, I’m not a doctor, I’m your death... Later
I’ll come to you... - And he leaves.



What harvest will your field increase, O Time,
For living life, for the coming new day?
What kind of children will you give birth to, what kind of new tribe?
He will step into another - but, alas, without me?..


More than once or twice we brought binoculars to our eyes,
But tomorrow is like a forest shrouded in fog...
Baikal, illuminated by rays, isn’t it a lesson for him?
Our Caspian?.. And the Caspian makes noise so that Baikal does not disappear.



I asked the roads for help:
“Without friends, believe me, the world is not nice,
Bring them!..” “Friends are busy...


I ask for sympathy at the door:
“Let your friends discover you as soon as possible!..”
“Yes, we are not averse to it. But... friends are busy...
Someday... Now it’s impossible..."



Three daughters and a wife - look,
Four critics in the house.
That I don't accept criticism -
I don’t understand who invented it!


They push me hard for everything
They scold you - you should have listened!..
And I listen to them obediently,
Without raising his head.



I didn’t understand that spring had come,
At least the birds told me about it.

I love my first lightning.


And I didn’t understand that autumn had come,
Even though the grass has withered everywhere.
I didn't notice until I remembered
I love my first sorrow.



The evil that has the strength beats the drums:
We dance, we moan, we turn the millstones...
Like a crack in a rock, a wound gapes
In my chest... Clutching it, I barely trudge.


Evil plays the zurna: at a concert
We are born and die, as in battle.
We fight from birth to death...
Covering the wound with my palm, I sing.



No matter how you sing, the tune doesn’t make me happy,
In which the spirit does not contain mountain plants.
No matter how you play, you won’t light a fire in me,
When I don’t hear the roar of persistent waves.


Why do I need a canvas, even though they’ve used up so much paint?
Creators, they didn’t create your portrait.
Look how many books are lying in the dust,
Why they didn’t talk about my love for you...



Love, having recognized you, I understood the essence of things:
The creations of singers and the death of brave men...
Oh song, I realized, having touched your secrets,
Who drowned and who swam in the end.


I am entirely in your power. It’s difficult for me... But I want
May it always be like this, and continue to be subject to control!
Love, you are my song that I whisper,
Which I'm afraid to sing in full voice.



Long live, in spite of evil,
A world of light that is unique,
Your two eyes, two hands,
Two words we say...


And the age that is so complex and simple,
And the day you were born.
Long live a thousand stars
Who are looking at us.



If only you knew everything about me from the very beginning
And to the end, you would never upset me.
But my wounds hurt, it doesn’t make me feel any better, -
You put them on because you didn't know me.


If only you knew everything about me that happened to me,
From beginning to end, she would never love me,
And my life would forever remain in gloomy darkness...
How I rejoiced because you didn’t know me.



Although sometimes life is not sweet for everyone,
But everyone loves her. In all ages.
Even though I’m angry with you, I blaspheme you,
But still I will never stop loving you.


I'm cold. The rain is pouring down.
And I, eccentric, am waiting for snow in the spring.
More harmful than you in dreams and in reality
I can’t find... And I’m calling you...



You were so beautiful in the evening -
My heart instantly fluttered.
The darkness did not deceive me
In the morning you became even more beautiful.


You were so beautiful in the spring,
She shone brighter than the sun before me...
And the vein did not deceive me,
You have become even more beautiful in winter...



It's so bad when you leave
It becomes me at the same hour!
And the heart is like a ring, where does it come from?
Suddenly a priceless diamond fell out.


When you leave - simple
Things suddenly get complicated.
My eyes are empty nests,
What did the birds suddenly leave?



If the sun didn't shine in the morning -
It will not shine in the evening.
But I don't say goodbye! hopes -
After all, love shines day and night...


If the flowers did not bloom in the spring -
They won’t bloom much less in winter.
But I don't say goodbye! beloved -
After all, love blooms at any time.



They say that if you sow love tirelessly -
Then groves and thickets of love will rise...
Why is it so bare in the mountains of Dagestan?
All my love is here: name it, call me...


They say that hot love is immutable
Ice on roads and rivers always melts...
I love you so much that it’s impossible to say!
Why are you colder than snow and ice?..



I saw: herbs keep fresh
And in the snowy winter - around the trunks.
I saw: remains snow-white
Snow in friendly spring - around the trunks.


And sometimes heads fly off your shoulders -
But not hats! - at your own door...
People break their legs - they don’t cry
And they don’t limp at their own doors.



Someone is thirsty - he drinks water.
Anger torments someone - he drinks blood.
I have one worry with no solution:
I drink wine - I'm tormented by love...


I drink wine - it will help to say the word
In honor of the one who drinks wine and drinks water;
Against those who are drunk with blood, who are full of malice,
He only hates - he doesn’t cry, he doesn’t sing...



The poet is indignant:
- Wife, why are you
I threw a bale into the oven
Poems and poems?..


Into the fire? Have mercy -
The wife says: -
Water, my dear,
Doesn't burn in fire...



When there is not enough love for one,
I, having loved many, kill my dream.
When sometimes I could love many people -
I doomed myself to one beauty.


I'm thirsty on a winter day among the ice -
I want to drink water from many springs...
When all the keys were calling from all sides,
I drank from one and was intoxicated by it...



A dog barks at other people's windows:
What danger threatens the house?
The dogs of the world bark: from time immemorial
Trouble threatens - for our own or for someone else...


She runs along the sea in the gray darkness
And barks, overtaking the evil force.
There is no such house in all the land,
Which would not be in danger.



I didn’t understand you, I didn’t figure it out,
O song that has been sung for thousands of years.
And your clothes will not be exhausted,
No one in the world can comprehend the secrets...


I didn’t understand you, I didn’t figure it out,
Love that has been boiling for millions of years:
You give birth to more and more hopes,
You keep more and more secrets - there is no limit to them.



Scientists
Layers of earth, lumps
Searching for news
From antiquity: shoulder blades, vertebrae,
All the bones, bones, thousands of bones...


But I didn’t come to discover the world of bones,
And the world of love is millions of years old,
I came to complement it, maybe
Give him both your shadow and light.



I'm flying with a bomb filled with passion,
To destroy her on the way
All the evil, all the lies that interfere with happiness,
Raze ruthlessness from the face of the earth.


I'm fiddling with a rocket filled with passion,
So that she can be everywhere - both near and far -
Become a generous sun for the green earth,
Rain for the drying land.


A sculptor who makes a monument to his mother


The heart is a rhythmic rocking cradle.
The forehead is all the roads that the son has traversed.
Hands – a child on each hand.
The eyes contain the son of weeks and years.




There are three ages in life, three different times,
Just like the three trees there at the foot of the mountain.
On the first tree spring leaves appeared:
My first love is at the very beginning of flowering.


The fruits on the other one are ripe and ready to fall:
Then my maturity has arrived - the sweetest passion.
Under the regal gold there is a third, neighboring tree:
My love is late - maybe even the last.



I'll stop my story in the middle,
After all, life is more changeable than the weather...
And with my dear, not in places, but in reality
I’ll suddenly break up for the sake of vanity.


- Having started the story, lead him,
Listening to us, the rivers said.
The mountains said: - Look at us,
Follow us: we are appointed forever.



We are not actors... No wig, no makeup
They don’t make us old and they don’t make us young.
The change of summers and winters changes us,
And a hundred doubts stir the soul.


And eternal love and the anger of the day
Sometimes they lead you forward, sometimes they pull you back.
A thousand worries torment me -
Oh, how to solder them together!..



I sing of the early dawns -
And the sun is already setting behind the ridges.
I sing of the signs of spring,
And the snow is already flying from the heights.


No matter how hard the mind tries, it is cruel
Diseases: never go away...
Lessons have never gone well before,
Spring disappeared again without a trace.



Morning has come again. What is it like -
I’m not in a hurry to find out: everything is desirable and sweet!
Sun, rain or snow outside the window - it’s all the same:
Isn't it enough that it has come?!


And trees and people flash through the window,
My soul is so light - not even a speck...
The morning is new - how dear it is to me!
How dear you are to me, the dawn of my life!



The color of the earth that made me happy yesterday
It's getting more and more sad, more and more...
Apparently the time is not far off
I want to be united with her forever.


And the flowers... Their smells sometimes
They scare and worry me so much...
Isn’t it them at some mournful hour
Will they put it on my tombstone?



When the hunter hunts,
Finds prey in the thickets -
How long has he been in the forest?
How late he comes home!


I often began to be late home,
Without fear of being late,
Since you have to rule over me
You became from the first date.



Let the arrow fly with your hand,
Without onions - barely
She will rise and fall,
Before reaching the goal...


And a song where there is no Dagestan,
Without breaking those rules,
Will not leave a mark on the heart
And it won't warm your soul.



I spend all the passing days with longing,
I'm afraid I can't wait for the coming, new day...
When the flowers fade, I know no peace,
I'm afraid that spring will not find me.


When you leave, I live in inescapable anxiety:
Will you ever come back and can we meet again?
I yearn for the past... And night has long been on the threshold...
Yes, night is on the threshold... And time does not roll back.



If there is no neighbor nearby -
I'm having a conversation with a staff...
The staff tells me
About long-standing spring dews.


If a friend is gloomy in the morning
I’m not nearby - I’m sharing with Pandur:
And my faithful pandur sings
About my immeasurable love...



You should tell me, coins,
Why are you so proud?
Sewn to a woman's shawl
Before you - to the ranks, ranks...


And now there are reasons for that
There are convincing ones:
A lot of men
Today they salute us...



O light, I am in eternal trouble with you
Thieves fear you like owls...
But why is there love from you?
Are you ready to hide without delay?


Escaping under the cover of darkness,
The thief, as it were, gets a release...
But, darkness, why are you hiding
The passion that radiates itself?



Know, mom, even you now
You can’t understand, listening to complaints.
I won't understand myself, believe me,
I don't understand my heart.


You will grab your head, father,
Having found out what my soul is yearning for...
Will I finally be able to figure it out?
What is happening on earth today?



I don’t believe myself... And I’m tired
She leaned on her and grabbed her in a vice...
The stars disappeared... Only you remained,
So that I don't die of boredom.


Pigeons do not circle in a tender flock -
Instead of them, crows turn black.
And it remains a bright hope
Only - “Good morning!” your.



Night flight... The engine roars:
Don't call me back...
And the moon floats overboard
With a story about love.


And thunder rumbles overboard,
He asks for warmth
He wants to talk about
How people sow evil.



Beautiful tree in the snow
In the sun, in the rain - beautiful.
Love is beautiful, I won't lie,
Every minute, hourly.


The cliff is not afraid of a thunderstorm,
Let it thunder whenever it wants.
Love at any time
Strong, brave and free.



Long ago in the spring
At the canopy path
It seemed like a stream to me
River rapids.


And in mature years
High water
It seems like a stream to me
From melting ice...



I'm twenty-eight - I'm a small child,
I am a boy - as long as my father is alive,
I grew up when my father passed away
Grief marked the limit of childhood.


I'm forty-three... Not a hair of gray.
I am a young man - as long as my mother is alive.
Mother died on a harsh February day...
While thinking, my head turned white.



I'm ready to talk with the waves,
Hurrying to replace each other,
And I hear the call of the fixed stars,
Shining on the ceiling of the universe...


Both in the dark at night and in the light of day
It's a joy for me to talk to you...
Only ask me about friends
Don't, I beg you, don't...



By the road, a stone lying on the grave told me:
Take your time, stay next to me for a moment.
If you are sad, understand that sadness is temporary,
Everything will pass, disappear, pass in the alternation of night and day.


If you are joyful, know that, frozen for a moment at the tombstone,
The hour of joy is short, but there is nothing stronger in the world
And more precious than love... Know that everything in the world is held together by love,
They don’t put it in the ground, they don’t put gravestones over it.



This song has been performed a thousand times...
How can I sing it now? Unclear!
- They will compose a thousand songs from a thousand phrases...
I am alone, about unsunset love.


And there are unplowed fields in our region!..
How will you plow them? Snow fell everywhere!
- I left my furrow on the ground
And I will still drive bulls...



If you are my friend, beware
Shut up and don’t swear friendship.
In days of sorrows I will be able to recognize her
In your look and handshake.


If you are my friend, then avoid
From confessions, do not swear friendship.
On fun days I'll hear this
In the song that will be sung by you.



Because of fear, I didn’t compose songs!
Appear now - the hour has finally come.
- But we are not sparrows, so that we can proudly fly into the sky
To reign when the eagles are decrepit among the rocks.


I pray, my love, that I left in fear,
Come to me quickly - he has come, it’s your turn. -
Love answered: “But it’s against the rules,”
Why fire now that the ice has melted?



The mother sings a song, rocking the cradle,
Is it prayer?.. What is more primordial in the world?
There is no mother... And the cradle is empty...
Oh, I have never seen anything sadder.


My father with a poker, at an early hour
Protects the light of life - in the fireplace...
But there is no father... The fireplace has long gone out.
I have never seen a more lonely picture.



Give me a lantern: I want it at least for a moment
See the faces of my companions...
The lantern went out. And the wind is still fierce -
Life is so dark that you cannot recognize people.


Give me binoculars: I really want to take a look,
Where are these people coming from?
I want to understand: where and from where?...
But in the darkness there is no trace.



I know there are thousands of all kinds of ailments
In life, in passion, in every day.
Thank you, dear, thank you, friend,
Your beauty hid them from me.


There are many in our healthy community
Questions from patients, gossip and quarrels...
Thank you, dear, with your kind words
I was able to drown out their senseless chorus.



Isn't my faith to blame for this?
I couldn't portray your face:
Haven't you mastered the colors and light?
But I did not penetrate the secret of beauty.


Nature, without hiding her understanding,
She suddenly sighed: there is no need to be sad!
After all, even to me, who created the universe,
Couldn't portray her...



I have five states of the day:
I change, but I don’t divide into parts.
Then I'm a baby - and I'm reaching for the fire,
I am young and full of strength and passion.


Now I’m an old man, now my blood is raging again,
And I'm a teenager, to everyone's surprise.
What unites everything is one love,
I behave according to her command.



Others say: in different guises
I live in two, or maybe forty...
I may have many faces, but you are my holiday,
You are the only one for all ages.


And be like spring, ten-faced,
Always renewing its color,
You are on a beautiful and great land
There is only one - there is no replacement for you.



Snow and snow - as long as the eye can see,
A sharp wind fights against me.
Snow falls on the gardens and mountains
An endless white veil.


It's a gloomy day, but there's no nicer day,
Even though the snowstorm is spinning, trumpeting:
After all, once on this December day
Your mother gave birth to you in the village.



Antiquity turns to dust, old man,
If it doesn’t support these days.
The giants of the past are just a handful of land,
If they could not instill valor in their offspring.


Modernity is a murdered accumulation of days,
If the future century does not need it.
The song now sung is empty nothingness,
If tomorrow no one remembers about her!



Besides those friends that are around,
There is a secret circle in the world
My invisible, unknown friends...
I am also someone's unknown friend.


In addition to those enemies that exist,
There are a hundred gangs in the world
My enemies are invisible, unknown...
I am also someone's unknown enemy.


MOTOR SHIP CARRYING
MY FATHER'S NAME


Not necessarily a poet,
Traveling around the world without a break -
After all, true talent will leave a mark,
That neither people nor years can erase.


My father is outside Dagestan
I didn’t go out... But now, strangely enough,
He plows the seas and oceans,
And I rush from distant countries to Tsada.



If you are my friend -
I have a request:
Don't warm yourself by the fire with anyone else.
One for crow and eagle
Only the sky, but not the mountain rock.


The second request is short and strict:
Do not touch the pandur of your sworn enemy.
But if you touch the strings by chance,
Never remember my melodies.



When I get tired of long wanderings
Both in native and foreign lands -
I'll walk to my parents' house
And I will sit on a basalt rock.


When I stop writing poetry,
I can easily find a monument,
No, not granite in the capital of Dagestan -
Simple basalt in the village of Tsada.



The wind shakes the mighty crowns,
The trunk is inflexible and sloping low.

It's like he's asking me for help.


The rain shakes the unreliable leaves -
Slippery handshakes of friends...
The branch is knocking on the window frantically,
As if we were one with her.



What a peak in white radiance
Rising above our land above all others?..
Probably the one between word and deed
Broken the once strong connection.


Which river is the longest and widest?
What can we compare only with the boundless sea?..
Probably the one that flows in this world
Between what we can and what we want.



Night... It was as if nothing had happened.
It has been drizzling for the third day in a row.
Quiet around - no disturbances, no turmoil -
My children and my beloved are sleeping.


They sleep and don’t know that it’s midnight this
Many were overtaken by illness and misfortune,
That I didn’t wait for the meager dawn
My old friend from the village of Tsada.



When I gave in to evil impulses,
In the gorges the wind carried me like a leaf.
When love spoke to me
I felt how clean the mountain air was.


Satisfied with everything - I have never met in my life -
And the one who was able to live without mistakes...
I returned empty-handed
When I wanted to shoot a fox.



A prayer-song is a sound from afar.
For a moment the soul is childishly pure...
The sadness of sorrows.
Is there anything sadder:
Mother died. And the cradle is empty.


The fire in the fireplace is quivering and bright,
Guarded by his father, he lived in darkness for a year...
There is no more lonely orphan in the world:
Father died. How cold the fireplace is.



Don't look for me, death - I'll come myself,
I won't delay until the deadline.
And while I’m still alive, when I meet a star,
I will not leave the way to hope.


I don’t beg for anything, friends.
About only one thing: on the stone of sorrow
Carve the holy word LOVE...
May love continue as in the beginning.


Octagons



Octal - eight lines,
Eight rivers of the native highlands,
The path to poetry, to the sea is far,
I wish you to go to the sea.


Eight lines - eight lines,
Eight young men of the mountain region,
Take a hundred roads,
Without losing your mountain hats.



In the old days they wrote slowly
Grandfathers on daggers and daggers
What with a pencil
I try to express it in sluggish words.


Grandfathers on disheveled horses
They rode into battle, saying goodbye to their loved ones,
And they wrote in blood on the stones
What I strive to write in ink.



It was not I who hatched my poems,
Anything happened, I won’t hide it:
Sometimes a coward smoothed them out with a pen,
The hero minted them from time to time.


The lover wrote them sublimely,
And the liar sprinkled, filling with lies,
And I dreamed of lines written,
As they say, by the hand of God.



There are three cherished songs among people,
And they contain human grief and joy.
One of the songs of all the others is brighter -
The mother lays it over the cradle.


The second is also a song of mothers.
With my hand stroking my icy cheeks,
They sing it over the graves of their sons...
And the third song is the rest of the songs.



The signs of autumn are becoming clearer,
And flocks of birds, realizing that this is not paradise,
Even though we sang praises to our homeland all summer,
They exchange their father's land for a warm land.


And only the eagles that were silent
Looking at the bare gardens
And they are in no hurry, spreading their wings,
To leave your native land in times of trouble.



If suddenly I become metal,
Don't mint coins out of me.
I don't want to rattle in anyone's pockets,
Light an evil light in the eyes.


If I'm destined to become metal,
Forge a weapon from me.
To give me a blade or a dagger
Sleep in the sheath and fly into battle, ringing.



The pundit shakes his head,
The poet is sad, the writer is sorry,
What is the Caspian Sea from the coastal line
Over the years it recedes and becomes shallow.


Sometimes it seems to me that this is nonsense,
That the old Caspian cannot become shallow.
The process of shrinking human souls
I'm much more worried.



We pass like trains
Let's puff and go on a long journey.
Stop "Life", you, as always,
You meet everyone with the bustle of the station.


So I came, but the deadline is soon,
Soon the road will carry me into the distance.
Red station light,
Delay my departure at least a little.



A guest knocks on the door on a dark night,
If you are a mountaineer, follow the law.
Whether you want it or not,
Open the door, overcoming sleep.


The song knocks on the chest on a starry night,
Everyone fell asleep, but you couldn’t bear it.
If you are a poet, before it's too late,
Get up and sing, forget that it’s night in the world.



There is a poet in the class of physicists,
And among the poets there are scientists.
Gives the world truth and light
The work is dangerous, their nights are sleepless.


Lightning flashes overhead.
Physicists and lyricists, before the deadline we
We are dying from radiation sickness,
From the intensity being too high.



A distant peak seems close.
If you look at the foot, it’s just a stone’s throw away,
But deep snow, rocky path
You go and go, but there is no end in sight.


And our work seems simple
And you will begin to sit and cast spells over the word,
The line will not work, and it will be easier
Climb to the top than compose a song.



Khochbar is not fiction, not someone’s dream,
The hero existed in years gone by,
But he is known to mountaineers of all times
From the songs of an unknown poet.


Born of a woman, the poet will die,
The hero will fall, and the ashes will decay somewhere,
But he will live in the world for hundreds of years
Evidence or fiction of the poet.



I happened to see sometimes:
The goldsmiths are my neighbors -
With the help of kazab without difficulty
They distinguished gold from copper.


My reader is an expert on values,
It’s hard for me without your kazab
Recognize the intricacy of lines,
Where there is copper under the guise of gold.



In the mountains, horsemen used to quarrel,
But the woman hurried towards them and suddenly
She threw a handkerchief at the men’s feet,
And the weapon fell from his hands.


Oh women, while in mortal anger
The continents did not raise their swords,
Throw men at their feet quickly
Their wet handkerchiefs in tears.



You, time, come into hand-to-hand combat with me,
You torture with insight, you punish with contempt,
Today you are stigmatized for yesterday's mistakes
And you destroy fortresses - my delusions.


Who knew that the truths would turn out to be fragile?
Why are you laughing, taking revenge and punishing?
Cause I was wrong by your mistakes,
Repeating your word enthusiastically!



My time did not spare heroes,
I couldn’t tell who was right and who was wrong,
My time buried heroes,
Without giving them military honors.


Time circled, discovering kinship
With a bird flying over the field,
With the bird that is brave from cowards
He doesn’t know the difference, he pecks at their eyes.



The clock struck on the wall again,
The hour that has passed will not return, it is gone!
Before him, maybe further than me,
Than until my last hour.


A sigh that has flown away cannot be returned,
He melted, dissolved, he is gone!
I'm further away from him, maybe
Than before my last breath.



Some poets are the sons of the era,
Others are engaged to eternity...
Trees, good or bad,
They are doomed to change their appearance.


Feeling which way the wind is blowing,
The trees change color, but the pine
Under the winter snow and under the summer heat
Equally always slim and green.



I don't wait in silence
I don’t call for a single word,
Let it come to me on its own
Like a tear - without waiting for the call.


Let it come unexpectedly, suddenly
Will fall onto a white page.
So my only close friend
He enters the house and does not knock on doors.



I'm an old shooter, and the word is a beast.
I took the gun, and the animal ran away.
A simple word flashed - and no.
Among the dead wood the trail is lost.


A cunning animal, not accustomed to gunfire,
The word walks on its own.
The word is hidden by the forest and the mountain,
The word disappears from the pen.



Sometimes I wander around the world alone.
Dust and dust, and there is no soul nearby.
But my favorite poets are coming
And they talk to me in silence.


Well, you, who don’t need a word,
Where do you get the strength to carry
Loneliness in a harsh land,
The hardships of a hard journey?



Position, positions of people,
Titles exalted to the skies,
I know that you have no friends,
There are superiors and subordinates.


Is it possible that someday I myself
Not caring about what is most precious,
I am in favor of titles and ranks
Will I turn away from you for once, my friends?



The hearth is burning, the smoke curls above the saklya,
But there is a crack in the wall of the house the size of a needle,
And the wind with a buffalo head
It freezes the house, getting into this crack.


Something similar happens in my poems:
I pay a cruel price for their warmth,
But the wind freezes the verse,
Crawling between loose words into lines.



Books, my books are lines
Those roads where the timid and the brave,
Then I walked, rising, to the top.
Then, stumbling, he flew into the gorge.


Books, books - bloody victories.
Do you know, taking heights:
You cover yourself with glory
Or are you shedding blood in vain?



“Tell me, O sea, why are you salty?”
“There are a lot of human tears in my waves!”
“Tell me, O sea, what are you painted with?”
“There are corals in my depths!”


“Tell me, O sea, why are you so excited?”
“Many brave people died in the abyss:
One dreamed that I would not be salty,
Another was diving to find corals!"



Childhood flows away like water,
Childhood is flowing away, but as an inheritance
The song of childhood remains for people,
The memory remains forever.


Youth flows away like a river,
What flows away will not return.
All that remains of her is feat,
The memory remains for centuries.



The rain is rustling outside my window,
Thunder rumbles outside my window.
Everything came together in my soul:
Pain and joy, love and anger.


I will give joy to my friends,
I will give my pain to the song.
I will give love to people,
I’ll leave the anger and reproach myself.



I compared the word to sheep's wool,
Sometimes I compared poetry to a burqa.
How much from wool to finished burka
Long-suffering and so much work!


A word is just a thread, but a poem is
Multi-pattern hundred-color carpet.
How much work and patience you put in
In every shade and every pattern!



“Tell me, our river is talkative,
Hundreds of miles and hundreds of years long:
What's the most beautiful thing you've seen?
On these hundreds of miles over hundreds of years?”


The mountain river answered me:
“I didn’t know anything more beautiful
Shapeless stone - black stone
At my very source."



Is it difficult to achieve the right feat!
A feat is a moment, but life is lived
So, to be worthy of your glory,
Harder than accomplishing a feat!


Is it difficult to become a traitor or a thief!
The moment of falling is brief, but then
It's hard to erase the stigma
Or live your life with such a stigma!



“How can you live, daredevil men?”
“If the wife is bad, then we curse fate!”
“How do you live, can you daredevil men?”
“If the wife is good, we live well!”


“How are you living, dove women?”
“If the husband is unkind, everything around is black!”
“How are you living, dove women?”
“If the husband is good, it’s still bad!”



We were born in the brightest hour
Women who are saints in kindness.
Why do so many of us
Are they sometimes very angry?


The kids are growing up in our house,
They reach out to us with kind hands.
People, explain why
Are we sometimes angry ourselves?



Little children grow up

The apple trees are white, spring is in bloom,
Something is scary to me, but what’s scary here?


They launch a rocket into the clouds,
Something is scary to me, but what’s scary here?
There doesn't seem to be anything bad
Except for my constant fear.



Slava, don’t, don’t touch the living,
What do you know about people?
Even the strongest and best of them
You kill sometimes.


Slava, the dead need you more than the living,
You won't bother them.
The dead with their hot breath
You resurrect forever.




My faithful friend, taken away by the war,
I feel warm from your fire,
And another living one sits with me
And it hits me with frost.



“A great sage must be an imam,”
At the gathering, the gray-haired chief suggested.
“A great brave man must be an imam,”
The naib was objected to by another naib.


It's probably easier to rule the whole world,
What is it to be a singer, in whose power is only verse,
Because poets need to possess,
In addition to these, there are hundreds of other properties.



Write on your dagger
Children's names so that every time
Hot-tempered people remembered
Something that is sometimes forgotten.


Cut out the butt of a rifle
Mothers' faces, so that every time
With condemnation or pleading in his gaze
Mothers would look at you.



The sea wave rushes to the shore,
The surf washes her out onto the sand.
And now the border is short
Lies between the sea and the wave.


But according to the laws of the coast and sea,
She rolls back to the sea.
O my people, in joy and in sorrow
You are the sea, I am your wave.



“Answer me, cheerful man,
Why is your skillful melody so sad?
“And the one who is cheerful for a whole century,
Sometimes my son is thoughtful and sad!”


“Explain to me, sad man,
Where does the harmony of your cheerful songs come from?
“And the one who is sad for a whole century,
Sometimes a son is both joyful and cheerful!”



"Soaring over rivers and slopes,
Where are you from, eagles? What blood?”
"Many of your sons have died,
And we are their hearts, which have become winged!”


"Shimmering between the zodiacs,
Who are you, luminaries in the night skies?
“Many mountaineers died young.
We are the eyes of those who mourned the fallen.”



In the mountains of Dagestan, horsemen used to
To strengthen male friendship more strongly,
They gave each other blades and daggers,
And the best cloaks, and the best horses.


And I, as evidence of sincere friendship,
I send you my songs, friends,
They are also my dear weapons,
And my horse, and my best cloak.



The mountain wind rocks the cradle
Aul kids are centuries old.
They compose a lullaby of a blizzard,
And the snow of avalanches, and the waves of mountain rivers.


Let our children be daredevils,
Let the glory of the Dagestanis not be tarnished.
The eagles that soared above their fathers
They hover over the little mountaineers.



I'm back in the land where the mountain wind blows,
And I don’t recognize my native land:
Children do not understand the language of fathers.
My language is becoming obsolete, dying.


Are we really speaking the Avars language?
Let's not think, sing songs or argue...
What to do - rivers tend to flow into the sea,
At least they themselves know: they will be swallowed up by the sea.



A pattern is applied to the handle,
Expensive metal was wasted.
I took the blade out of its sheath
And I see: the dagger is bad and dull.


I felt sorry for someone else's work,
And I saw at that moment
Fonts, embossing, bindings
Other empty books.



I rarely rejoice in my victories,
It seems to me that there is something missing in the poems.
It seems to me that he is following me
Already born a true poet.


Let him surprise the world with new consonances,
Which I may not understand
And may one day give me a kind word
He will remember my love for him.



New, super-powerful weapons
Don't invent for people.
An ancient weapon - friendship
Sheathed in my soul.


Our fathers and grandfathers told us
The gold of your weapons,
So that we don't let him break it,
So that they don’t let him dull him.



Another green garden rustles with leaves
And he whispers: they say, I’m blooming to the envy of everyone!
And there are clouds in the sky, foreshadowing hail,
They look, laughing, at the young ovary.


Some people easily say,
How happily they live in the world.
And happiness frowns its unkind gaze:
“What fools you are, what children!”



"Give me my father's horse,
I can jump, thank God!”
I jumped into the saddle, but the horse
I threw it off and fell on the road.


“Quiet, people. I'll start playing
Give me my father’s vaunted pandur...”
I just touched the string with my fingers -
And the string broke with a ringing sound.



The son of a highlander, I was raised to be non-flimsy from childhood,
I endured reproaches and beatings.
Father for my actions and mistakes
Not as a joke, it used to twist my ears.


As an adult, time strikes me
And sometimes my ears turn red,
How the playing dutar twists his ears,
When, having weakened, the string goes out of tune.



Our firmament does not seem eternal to me.
It sometimes seems shaky and shabby to me.
Sometimes it seems to me that the sky is just around the corner
It will fall on my head with all its weight.


But the mountains are high and I'm protected
Mountain peaks, mountain steeps,
They support the sky,
The supports are powerful like an old roof.



“Where are you, happiness, where is your bright face?”
“I am on the heights where you have not climbed!”
“Where are you, happiness? I have reached the top."
“In rivers in which you have not yet swam!”


“Where are you, I swam a thousand rivers?”
“In the songs that you will compose tomorrow!”
“Where are you, I dedicated a song to you?”
“I'm ahead! Catch up if you can!”



In the fields where the harvest is ripening,
We irrigate the land stingily.
The harvest will ripen in the fields -
We cut off the bread at the roots.


But the expanses of these same fields
Our blood irrigates grief.
And the reapers themselves, and the plowers,
Like bread, it cuts us off at the roots.



All the pages in the book of life are beautiful,
Everything in this book is sensible and smart.
To be reborn as an ear of wheat,
Dead grain lies in the ground.


When the spring rain falls somewhere,
Noisy grass will spring up in the meadows;
When a tear flashes in the poet's eyes,
Real words will be born.



Here we have such blue mountains
And such golden fields!
If all the edges took on their color,
The earth would become even more beautiful.


There are new and old covenants
Among the people of my spring land.
If the world followed these precepts,
He would have become much more perfect.



My home is now far from my father’s places;
I can't stand heights well
And yet I have not heard a reproach from you,
I know, mountaineers, your kindness.


And I know there will be a kind word
For his brother on that path,
At that hour when you have to bear on your shoulders
Carry me on my last journey!



If you are Indian, friend,
Please the world with the royal cloak,
Mold the clay, spin your circle,
If you are a Balkhar potter.


Man, appreciate your gift
Don’t knead the clay, Indian,
Don't shred the wool, potter,
To fashion jugs.



The poet composed many songs
About our land, about the high mountains,
And the mountain region has been about him for a hundred and twenty years
Sings in the language of his descendants.


The fog of centuries is like twilight smoke,
Floats across the sky, but indissoluble
Singer of the Caucasus, who died young,
And the Caucasus itself with gray peaks.



Goldfish, anywhere
Swim: I won't catch you.
It seems inconvenient to beg for fame,
I don't want silver and gold.


And back to my former youth
You won't bring me back, you won't light me up
First meeting, first kiss,
The first song at night by the fire.



What happened to the mountaineer: I'm afraid of heights.
Why did I climb to the top behind the clouds?
It seems to me that I won’t be able to resist, I’ll fall apart,
The rope will break and I will fall off the cliff.


Poet, I stand at my peak,
It’s both difficult and scary, but I’m still itching.
Every song makes it harder for me to breathe,
And it seems that the line is about to break.



My heart, fellow villagers,
Bury it, spare no effort,
On the Upper Polyana or on the Lower Polyana
In our village Tsada.


Body to foreign cities and wanderings
I got used to it, but my heart always lived
On the Upper Polyana and on the Lower Polyana
In our village Tsada.



The stream beats under a high rock,
Proud, insensitive to the roar of the waters.
Should I not understand the state of the flow,
Who will understand my condition?


The stream beats and groans, but cannot
To stir up the indifferent stones
This rock, surprisingly similar
With my stone-hearted beloved.



Dagestan, everything that people gave me,
I will share with you in honor,
I have my orders and medals
I'll pin you to your tops.


I will dedicate ringing hymns to you
And the words turned into verse
Just give me a burka of forests
And a hat of snowy peaks!



Hey, young man, see how the old man is gray
Walking through a crowded city?
You, young man, see how with a clean hand
Is he touching the white beard?


You are still young, you are a horseman and a groom,
But time will whiten our beard.
Be careful not to stain your gray hairs
With hands unclean from a young age.



I want to go to Charoda,
I want to get to Gunib at least for a while,
I want to go to Tlyarota
And visit the Kama and the Volga.


I want to visit Sofia.
I want to sail along the Golden Horn,
How long do I want to live?
But how destined we are to live a little!



The cities are different from each other,
And people, and houses, and monuments.
Only similar everywhere and always
Poets, children and students!


Isn’t that why they are always so close to me,
No matter where you are on the planet.
My fellow citizens and countrymen,
Students, children and poets!



There are no all-knowing people in the world,
There are only those who imagine themselves to be all-knowing.
Sometimes I'm afraid of their authority,
A condemning look and a punishing look.


Neither Pushkin nor Socrates knew everything,
The whole world, large and populous, knows everything,
But sometimes the world is judged by those who think
Themselves as bearers of absolute truths.



Again the road, we are always on the road.
I know how long I have walked and lived.
And how much still remains to go,
You don't know, and I don't know either.


Again the road, we are always on the road.
I see the goal. It's more expensive than anything else.
Is it destined to reach her?
You don't know. and I don't know either.



I happen to go on the road without a burqa -
In the mountains the weather deteriorates instantly.
The horse happens to twist his leg -
And they definitely schedule races.


When I go into the forest without taking a gun,
The birds are growing bolder and hovering over me.
When my friends leave me
Enemies become impudent, they laugh at me.


* * *
E. Kapieva


To this land, where by some miracle
You and I have never met,
You came out of nowhere without me,
Without waiting, you went nowhere.


But I bow before you gratefully
I want it for being in silence
I am again leafing through the pages of your books,
Like letters addressed to me.



Again distances separated us,
My friend doesn't write letters, and again
I write messages to myself
Which he could send to me.


Neighbors surround me.
And I remember just one
All the lines not written by a friend
Ingeniously invented by me.



I have not seen fireplaces where there is always fire,
The fire burns and does not go out.
And in my chest - put your palm -
The fire burns and does not go out.


Where lights flicker and nights and days,
There is no such village.
And the lights in my eyes don’t go out
My native village.



I love looking at two friends
The most loving and the best,
I would like to approach him and her,
So that we become three inseparable.


Being a three-winged bird is not given.
On earth I am not dear to anyone,
I'm dragging one wing...
It's hard for a bird to be one-winged!



A friend left my doorstep
Left in reality, came in a dream,
And the road is overgrown with grass,
Along which joy came to me.


The friend left. What is blasphemy and glory to me?
How should I live and how should I sing songs?
Now my right hand is no longer with me,
To wipe away tears in grief.



We will all die, there are no immortal people,
And this is all known and not new.
But we live to leave a mark:
A house or a path, a tree or a word.


Not all streams dry up,
Not all tunes will be destroyed by time,
And the streams will multiply the power of the river,
And the song will increase our glory.



The child cries, the mother bends over him:
“What hurts you, my little one?”
But the stupid boy cries, breaks down,
What will he, the wordless one, explain to her?


Dear friends come to my house, to me
And they ask: “What’s wrong with you again?”
But, like a sick child, I can’t help them
Say a word or give a sign.



I came here again and I don’t believe it myself.
Here is the class where I studied for the first year.
Now I’ll make up my mind, now I’ll open the doors.
It will take your breath away and your heart will fall.


And a barefoot boy, familiar to me,
Rising from the bench that stood in that corner,
He will run towards me, gray-haired.
And I am afraid and waiting for this meeting.



In songbirds, and even more so in nightingales
Never throw a stone.
Girls, your loved ones are in pain
Never cause any harm!


You, my love, are harsh with me,
You, by chance, are a defensive word,
I didn't notice that this word
It hit me like a stone.



Don't look at me so proudly
And I am proud with the proud,
Proud that I can saddle a horse myself,
Plow and sow with these hands,


That my heart is beating in my chest,
And the song and love for the native land.
Don't look at me so proudly
I myself am proud with the proud.



The shepherd said that neither grief nor anger
He didn’t know, he didn’t curse his share,
Until the calf found one
The road to the wheat field.


And everything was bright before me,
I didn’t know troubles and worries,
Until my heart found you
Damn your road.



Kaisyn Kuliev,
Alim Keshokov


I had brothers. One of them,
Lost in that war
Was very similar to you, Kaisyn,
You reminded me of my brother.


The second one looked like you, Alim.
Remember, then on fire
Have you met my brother?
My brother died in the war.



How many dashing young men there were
In a land covered in severe fire.
And now they cry, thinking about them,
Still living mothers and widows.


The sons of former soldiers are getting married,
And on earth, which has known the smoke of destruction,
They look at the young men with concern
Their brides and mothers are old women.



From a young man from our village
There was a black-haired wife
That year, when they turned twenty,
The war came and separated them.


The wife of a twenty-year-old hero
The gray-haired woman sits near the porch,
Their son, who bears a dear name,
Today he is older than his father.



If with those with whom we lived next to,
Having died, it was given to us to meet,
I need to die quickly
I've been thinking about this for a long time.


And not how I will come to the lost,
Those who laid down their heads in war,
What - old man - I’ll tell them, the young ones, the former ones
In this life, my peers?



Were once upon a time in distant days
Five friends inseparable from me.
The war came and they left,
Two returned from the war.


One lives far away now
He left and got married a long time ago.
And with what’s nearby, we’ve been at loggerheads for a year,
My friend has changed a lot.



Only the trains are late,
And the night in due course gives way to dawn.
The time always comes on time:
March comes in March, summer comes in summer.


And you, poet, take care of one thing:
Make sure you don't confuse the time, for God's sake.
Say goodbye at night to the passing day,
Meet the new one at the doorstep at dawn.



Do you want to know if they are high or not?
Peaks, spurs, rocks,
Ask, and love will give you the answer,
She flew up the mountains.


Do you want to know the depth of the seas,
That they do not surrender to our mercy,
Ask love, because she
And I had to be there.



The peaks of distant mountains are covered in snow, like lime,
I remember: in childhood, five friends,
On that hillock and nearby,
We drank water from many springs.


Again I'm here, but along the hill and around
Now one stream flows from the peaks.
The boy of my distant childhood!
There is no one, I am left alone.



I happened to wander around the world,
I was captivated by foreign countries for three days.
And on the fourth day, as if in a dream,
I saw everything, my dear home, my dear faces.


I was captivated by the first three days
Alien speech and the groan of a foreign sea.
And then I heard the snoring of a horse,
And the noise of birds, and the speech of the native highlands.



Again, my native land is behind me,
And again a foreign land beyond the river.
The border of the fatherland is not a forest, not a field.
The border of the homeland is the border of peace.


But I return again from afar,
Friends shaking warm hands.
The border of the fatherland is not a bridge, not a river.
The border of the homeland is the border of separation.



You say Africa is dark.
I will hardly argue with you,
But she might not be dark,
Whenever the light in front of her is not obscured.


Never blame people
For what is not given to them in full...
Before cities were built,
Legends about them were born in caves.



Why do I need gold and stones?
What is forever hidden in the mountains?
And I don't need a star in the sky
If there is no light, hiding in the clouds.


You may live a lot, or you may live a little,
But I’ll tell you without hiding:
If the pain of others is not yours,
Your life has been lived in vain.



At night I used to have difficulty dragging
Broken feet on stones,
And mom lights a candle in the window,
So that I don't go astray.


Since then I have trampled many roads,
I got into thunderstorms and blizzards,
And everywhere a distant candle light
Helped me reach my goal.



I met trouble and joy on the road,
I laughed, I cried, but time flew by,
And a lot of things turned into grief,
What at first seemed like joy.


Sorrows suddenly became victories,
A smile brings tears... We argue in vain:
There is no one in the world, or maybe we don’t know
The border between joy and grief.



The eagle spread out in the sky froze,
As if he embraces the whole world with wings,
I would like to spread my arms wider,
Hug all of you who inhabit the earth.


All of you living in these spaces,
Everyone who laughs, grieves and cries.
I would like to sing such songs, from which
The stones become lamb's wool.

Shamil's saber was burning

The words, and I remembered them from childhood:

"He is not a brave man who is in battle

Thinks about the consequences!"

Poet, let the signs of words be minted

They live next to your pen:

"He is not a brave man who is in battle

Thinks about the consequences!"

Per. N.Grebneva

A Word about Mother (Rasul Gamzatov)

(excerpt from the poem)

It’s hard to live when you’ve lost your Mother forever.

There are no happier people whose mother is alive.

In the name of my dead brothers

Please, think about my words.

No matter how the rush of events beckons you,

No matter how you attract me into your whirlpool,

Take care of your mother more than your eyes,

From grievances, from hardships and worries.

Pain for sons is like chalk

He'll bleach her braids white.

Even if the heart is hardened,

Give mom a little warmth.

If you have become harsh at heart,

Be gentle with her, children.

Protect your mother from evil words.

Know: children hurt everyone the most!

If your mothers are tired,

You must give them a good rest.

Keep them away from black shawls,

Protect women from war!

Mother will die, and the scars will not be erased,

The mother will die, and the pain will not be relieved.

I conjure: take care of your mother,

Children of the world, take care of your mother!

Take care of your friends (Rasul Gamzatov)

Know, my friend, the price of enmity and friendship

And do not sin with hasty judgment.

Anger at a friend, perhaps instantaneous,

Don’t rush to pour it out just yet.

Maybe your friend was in a hurry

And I accidentally offended you.

A friend was guilty and apologized -

Do not remember his sin.

People, we are getting old and decaying,

And with the passage of our years and days

It's easier for us to lose our friends

Finding them is much more difficult.

If a faithful horse, having injured his leg,

Suddenly he stumbled, and then again,

Don't blame him - blame the road

And don’t rush to change your horse.

People, I ask you, for God's sake,

Don't be shy about your kindness.

There are not many friends on earth:

Be afraid of losing friends.

I followed different rules

Seeing evil in weakness.

How many friends have I left in my life?

How many friends have left me?

There was a lot of stuff after that.

And it happened on steep paths

How I repented, how I missed

I have lost my friends!

And now I long to see you all,

Those who once loved me

I have never been forgiven

Or those who haven't forgiven me.

Per. N.Grebneva

Even those who are left can (Rasul Gamzatov)

Even those who are left, maybe

Five minutes to look at the white light,

They fuss, they go out of their way,

As if they still have hundreds of years to live.

And in the distance, in the silence of a hundred centuries

Mountains, looking at noisy people,

Frozen, sad and stern,

It’s as if they only have five minutes to live.

Per. N.Grebneva

When someone is endowed with a vice (Rasul Gamzatov)

When someone is endowed with a vice,

We judge, and we shout, and we are indignant,

We are a relic of our grandfather's times

We name all the worst vices.

That one is a careerist, and that one is a slanderer,

Cursing people in evil anonymous letters.

But what do grandfathers have to do with it? After all, our language

In those days I didn’t even know such words!

Per. N.Grebneva

Other poems by Rasul Gamzatov

Rain upon the sill-dazedly I dream of you,
Snow upon the hill-dazedly I dream of you.
Cloudless skies at dawn-dazedly I dream of you,
Fields of summer corn-dazedly I dream of you.
Swallows dip and dart-dazedly I dream of you,
Gather and depart-dazedly I dream of you.
Leaves that blow and whirl, leaves aglow with honey-dew
Give me no respite-dazedly I dream of you.
Surely you're a girl better than I ever knew
If all day and night dazedly I dream of you.

My elder brother died twelve years ago
Upon the battlefield of Stalingrad.

My aged mother nurses still her woe
And goes about the house in mourning clad.

And there is pain and bitterness for me
In knowing I am older now than he.

FRIENDSHIP

Long have you lived and, still content
To shelter from life's storms,
You cannot name a single friend
To whom your lonely heart warms.

When years have passed and you are old,
People will turn and say:
"He lived a century, poor soul,
Who never lived a day."

A HUNDRED WOMEN I ADORE

A hundred women I adore,
I see them all about.
Awake-asleep, I swoon-I soar
But cannot blot them out.
A girl I never can forget
First woke my heart to joy
When, coming to the spring, she met
A barefoot country boy.
The little girl seemed from afar
No bigger than her water jar.
Cool was the water that she knelt
To take up from the spring.
Cool? No! For, standing there, I felt
It scald my flesh, and sting.
Her glance, so keen and fancy-free,
Still to this day entrances me.

Later, wandering idly by
The dove-grey Caspian's shore,
I loved a girl, but was too shy
To knock upon her door.
So I would roam about her home,
A suitor out of mind,
A maple tree I’d climb to see
Her shadow on the blind:
She lived up on the second floor…
And still that young girl I adore.

And there's another young girl, who
Was traveling by train
To Moscow, and this young girl, too,
I'd love to see again.
I’m grateful, booking clerk, to you,
Who set her at my side
So that we viewed the landscape through
One carriage-window wide.
And all my life beside this girl
I'd gladly travel through the world.

One angry girl I still adore
Who would not be gainsaid,
Who, wild with indignation, tore
My manuscript to shreds.

Arkady Raikin

And the horse did not rear up,

I wasn’t chomping at the bit with impatience,

He just smiled white-toothed

And he bowed his head heavily.

His mane almost touched the ground,

looked like fire.

At first I thought:

what a miracle

This horse laughs like a man.

This won't bother anyone.

I decided to take a closer look at the horse.

the horse does not laugh, but cries,

Bowing my head like a human being.

The eyes are oblong, like leaves,

And two tears fog inside...

When I laugh

you, my dear, come closer

And take a closer look.

Translation by Y. Kozlovsky

Ballad about the woman who saved the poet

The day went by like a fast train

Sit by the fire, put aside your worries.

I'm not a fairy tale for you

I want to tell you, Omar-Gadzhi.

In the land where you are, Caucasian highlander,

I once drank wine from bowls,

Famous old poet

He was dying in a hospital bed.

And, overcoming suffering,

I remembered how, at sunset

Jumping to a woman on a date,

He drove the Arabian horse.

But in the tent of midnight blue

I saw stars in her pupils,

And now I was lying down, unable to get up,

With amber rosary in hands.

We honor our own people,

He did not reproach, did not beg the doctors.

People came with mountain honey

And with the water of healing springs.

Knowing the secret of the doctors of Tibet,

Fellow countrymen, having set off on a long journey,

They brought medicine for the poet,

Capable of returning youth.

But he did not take this medicine

And he said farewell to the doctor:

It's time for me to die! The song is sung

I don't want anything from life.

And when the day sank, as into a tomb,

Young, inviting and brave,

A woman drove to the hospital

And I went to the doctor on duty.

And he heard:

Now to the poet

I'm the only one who can help,

No matter how you resort to prohibition,

I will go to the poet this night!

And, to match the mysterious light,

Young as the thin moon

In light clothing to the poet,

Sinful, she appeared.

And in the morning with her from the hospital

He ran, a lean Asian man.

And there were eyewitnesses to this

Not the gullible, they say.

But they did not marvel at this

Local experienced men

Like, such cases have happened

More than once in the old days, Omar-Gadzhi.

And when they see everything with their own eyes,

That my turn is nearing the end,

Maybe me one night

The young woman will save.

Per. Y. Kozlovsky

Poor sheep

You are sinless before

That she almost became a saint.

Didn't bite anyone

No one was gored.

Twice a year you get your hair cut

Until the last ring.

And one day at five minutes

The skin will be torn off clean,

Poor sheep

Poor sheep!

The person was born:

And you crown with skewers,

The man left the world -

And you were left without skin.

Open the door wide in front of the kunak -

And the stove burst into flames.

Vinegar mixed with garlic

And the smell of barbecue...

Poor sheep

Poor sheep!

A pile of fine fleece

You are trembling in eternal fear

And at any time

You give hats to courage.

The wineskin is ready to lose weight,

So that the wine flows like a river.

And again - a skiff for you:

Your fat tail is too varnished,

Poor sheep

Poor sheep!

You are innocent and meek

And that's why I'm not foolish

For atrocities in all ages

The wolf dresses up in your skin.

Words of true harmony

It will not be erased like a notch.

And sometimes all my life in a row

They say about someone:

Poor sheep

Poor sheep!

Take care of your friends

Know, my friend, the price of enmity and friendship

And do not sin with hasty judgment.

Anger at a friend, perhaps instantaneous,

Don’t rush to pour it out just yet.

Maybe your friend was in a hurry

And I accidentally offended you.

A friend was guilty and apologized -

Do not remember his sin.

People, we are getting old and decaying,

And with the passage of our years and days

It's easier for us to lose our friends

Finding them is much more difficult.

If a faithful horse, having injured his leg,

Suddenly he stumbled, and then again,

Don't blame him - blame the road

And don’t rush to change your horse.

People, I ask you, for God's sake,

Don't be shy about your kindness.

There are not many friends on earth:

Be afraid of losing friends.

I followed different rules

Seeing evil in weakness.

How many friends have I left in my life?

How many friends have left me?

There was a lot of stuff after that.

And it happened on steep paths

How I repented, how I missed

I have lost my friends!

And now I long to see you all,

Those who once loved me

I have never been forgiven

Or those who haven't forgiven me.

Per. N.Grebneva

Brows

There is a spacious clearing on your forehead,

And a little lower, near her,—

Two lakes, as if two Sevans.

Two lakes are my languor.

On the shores of the most beautiful lakes -

I dream about each of them separately -

Two black foxes lie all their lives,

It's like a furious living pattern.

There is no one more cunning than them in the world.

Try to deceive such foxes.

Look: noticing the hunter,

They pretended to be killed.

They won’t touch me with their play,—

It’s not for nothing that lakes are fraught with passion!

Hearing the music, the foxes will tremble,

The pretenders will not be able to resist.

Oh, how they soar openly,

Teasing with a sly sign!

And how they are curved arrogantly,

When you get angry with me.

Oh, how they hint at affection,

Fanning the flames in my chest!

And as they sometimes warn,

Silently saying: don't come near!

I've heard many times that the fox's cunning

Known to the world since ancient times.

But these foxes - I was convinced personally -

More cunning than all her living sisters.

Everyone envy them. And even birds

The heavenly ones tremble with envy...

Two black fluffy foxes

There is plenty of room to recline near the lakes.

I fulfill their wishes instantly,

I keep an eye on them, waiting for instructions.

They will order - and I will fight the whole world!

If they order me, I’ll fall lifeless!..

Thank you, foxes, from me

For saving the lakes.

For the fact that you do not sleep, keeping

Their pure unclouded gaze.

Thank you for the hour when

I came to those lakes to drink,

You immediately pretended without difficulty,

That you sleep well at this time.

In Ahvaha

To my friend Musa Magomedov

So that the heart beats faster,

Let's go to Ahwah

Let's find out if we are still young

Or did you have a party as a groom?

Let's shake off our youth in Ahvaha

as is customary there,

We'll throw away our hats

To one of the girls through the window.

And it will immediately become clear to us,

Who is the girl in love with?

Whose hat will fly back?

Besides, the girl is cold...

And wild talk about love,—

All this did not happen yesterday.

That long ago I became a teenager,

I am not my peers in the village,

And those who were much older

Tried to make friends.

Isn't that why I found myself

With the guys in the yard alone,

Where ahead of schedule distinguished himself

And I don’t regret it.

The foliage rustled like foam,

The thin moon was shining.

We listened for a long time to how she sang

Horny woman sitting by the window.

She sang about the sun and about the stars,

And about the one who is dear to the heart.

Let him hurry before it's too late

Until someone else fell in love.

What has become more trembling than a bird

My soul is no wonder

And the guys took off their hats

And they began to aim at the window.

No skill was needed here.

I'm like a lot: yes or no,

Like an equal, he threw his cap deftly

Following their hats.

It seemed like I wasn't breathing at all,

When the hats are one by one,

As if from the cocoon of a sheep,

They jumped out under the moonlight.

And a cap with a visor that looks like

On a broken wing,

When I fell to the ground too,

I realized I was out of luck.

And the girl out of compassion

- Boy, wait.

You came early for a date,

Come back later, honey.

Trembling with grief, as if with fear,

I left, a wounded youth,

And someone behind his hat

He climbed through the open window.

The years have flown by like water,

More than once the ashes swirled around the leaves,

Like through the mountains, through the years

I arrived again in Akhvakh.

Mountain brides...

On the field of time for them?

There were other guys with me,

And I was older than the others.

Everything is as it was then: and the song is the same,

And the rustle of leaves in silence.

it even seemed

I'm the same girl in the window.

When the hats went into action,

I pray to the girl for happiness,

Flew into the open window

And my hat is fashionable.

The boys sighed, saddened,

Ah, sobering reality:

The hats returned to the ground,

Raising the dust slightly.

And, flying almost to the gate,

My wide-brimmed

The hat fell like a crow

Shot from a gun.

And a girl of compassion

She said, as if in reproach:

- You came late for a date,

Where have you been until now?

Everything is the same as it was then, everything is so similar.

And the stars were seen from heaven:

The other one, who was younger than me,

He climbed through the open window.

And so all my life I

surprisingly,

I cherish hope

But I come too early,

I come too late.

Translation from Avar by Y. Kozlovsky

In the old days they wrote slowly

Grandfathers on daggers and daggers

What with a pencil

I try to express it in sluggish words.

Grandfathers on disheveled horses

They rode into battle, saying goodbye to their loved ones,

And they wrote in blood on the stones

What I strive to write in ink.

Per. N.Grebneva

I'm in love and fascinated with you again...

This doesn’t happen, you say?

But every time I visit it’s magical, new,

Paris seems mysterious to me.

It happens. You live, you live in the world.

Spring is coming - and as if for the first time

Do you feel how young this wind is

And a new drop of confusing story.

For the first time I write a poem -

Although I have been writing poetry for a long time.

Let there be a lot of joyful excitement,

But I remember only the last thing - one thing.

It happens like this... No loss, no decay

Passion does not know, being born again and again.

You are my first poem

And the first, immortal love.

I'm back...

I'm back

after a hundred years,

From darkness to this earth.

He closed his eyes when he saw the light.

I barely recognized my planet...

Suddenly I hear:

the grass rustles,

Living water flows in the stream.

“I love you!..” - the words sound

And they shine without becoming obsolete...

A millennium has passed.

I returned to earth again.

Everything I remembered was swept away

The sands of another time.

But the lights of the stars also fade,

Having learned that the sun will come out soon.

as in our days -

They fall in love and hate...

I left and came back again,

Leaving eternity behind.

The world has changed down to its basics.

It is all permeated with novelty.

But anyway -

winter is white.

Flowers in the meadows flicker sleepily.

Love remained as it was.

And the quarrel remained the same.

A distant peak seems close.

If you look at the foot, it’s just a stone’s throw away,

But deep snow, rocky path

You go and go, but there is no end in sight.

And our work seems simple

And you will sit over the word and cast spells,

The line will not work, and it will be easier

Climb to the top than compose a song.

Per. N.Grebneva

Eternal youth

Love for all ages

A. S. Pushkin

Here the judges lined up,

Covering half the horizon.

And their eyes burn with anger,

And all the words fly at me:

“The youth who did not shave his beard,

A puppy who does not remember kindness

Answer us: is it true that you

You were with a woman in the forest yesterday?..”

I answer the judges: “Yes!

I found a lot in the forest,

As a boy I went there

From there I walked like a man!..”

Once again the judges lined up,

Covering half the horizon.

And their eyes burn with anger,

And all the words fly at me:

“Forgetting about your gray hair

And forgetting past sins,

You walked with the woman and her

Whispered love poems?..”

“Yes!” I answer the judges.

He was walking with a woman. Whispered words.

And I believed that my destiny

Light while love is alive!..”

And the judges frown menacingly,

And again they demand:

“We don’t understand,” they say, “

We don't understand. Explain...”

I tell them: "There is love,

And, feeling her crown,

A young man easily grows up,

And the old man is getting younger again.

Becomes a dumb singer,

The singer becomes mute.

Love is my constant companion.

I will be forever young!

For the first time, having offended you, -

“Forgive me,” I whispered pleadingly.

The second time I did something wrong,

He came to you without raising his eyes.

You looked at me reproachfully

Reminding, as if inadvertently,

That mercy has a limit.

And for the third time I was guilty soon

And he himself admitted his own shame

And I didn’t dare hope for anything.

I saw a look filled with longing

Above the gossip of windy rumors.

And suddenly with a generous hand

You touched the guilty head.

Translation by Kozlovsky

People dream about everything: joy, sadness

And lasting peace at home...

But let only our meetings

No one dreams of it.

Let no one talk about you and me

Doesn't know what's around -

About our happiness, our pain

And the first sound of the song...

Everything that is good in us happens

People call it youth.

Fervor of the soul, irreconcilability in disputes,

They say they will pass, and very soon.

They say when I'm older,

I will forget the fervor of youth,

I’m tired of worries and roads.

They say I will become indifferent.

I will become calm and solid,

Indifferent to glory and insults,

I will invite guests for a cup of tea,

Indistinguishable from friends to enemies...

If, indeed, this could happen -

It’s better for me to stumble today,

I better not wait for this

Today, fall off a cliff into the abyss!

Translation from Avar by E. Nikolaevskaya and I. Snegova

With all my soul I want happiness for your friends!

I wish I could get them married as soon as possible, or give them away!

How many golden hours do you spend with them?

So he would take it and bolt the doors of the house!

How many times have I walked from wall to wall with melancholy,

I waited for their conscience to awaken, so that they would go home,

I looked at my watch, but the hands were slowing down...

And the guests do not sit for long - it seems like a century.

I have never seen such restless people before:

They talk all day and they won’t get tired, I’m tired for them.

If the two of us decide to spend the evening,

At least one of your friends should come over!

So the poet, having conceived poetry, works until daylight,

But the chatterbox-idler comes - and the poet disappears...

And now I'm waiting for someone to suddenly knock.

I wish I could marry all your friends!

Head of Hadji Murad

I see a severed head

And I hear battle rumbles,

And blood flows over the bare stone

Through unpeaceful villages.

that the rocks are chiseled,

Those who have seen the views take off.

And they jump along the steep side of the road

The murids are loyal to the Caucasus.

I asked the bloody head:

Whose were you, pray tell?

crowned with glory,

Have you found yourself in the wrong hands?

And suddenly I hear:

I have nothing to hide

I am the head of Hadji Murad,

And so it rolled off his shoulders,

That I once got lost.

The road I chose was not the best,

It's all my vain disposition...

I look at the lost head,

That in the fight it was cut down unequally.

Paths stretching across the distance,

Men are born in the mountains,

Must be alive or dead

We are returning to the top.

Per. Y. Kozlovsky

Even those who are left, maybe

Five minutes to look at the white light,

They fuss, they go out of their way,

As if they still have hundreds of years to live.

And in the distance, in the silence of a hundred centuries

Mountains, looking at noisy people,

Frozen, sad and stern,

It’s as if they only have five minutes to live.

Per. N.Grebneva

Day and night are born for good

Children of time - brother and sister.

And from time to time they are all over the planet

They always walk apart,

And the Earth's primordial children -

These are people, fire and water.

There's a fire above the river

It bursts into the sky.

And I'm happy until the morning

I see the red-faced brother,

Hearing my sister humming.

Per. Y. Kozlovsky

If there are a thousand men in the world...

If there are a thousand men in the world

I’m ready to equip matchmakers for you,

Know that in this thousand men

If you have been captivated for a long time

One hundred men

whose blood rushes with a roar,

It’s not hard to see between them

A highlander named Rasul.

If ten are in love with you

True husbands -

without hiding the fire,

Among them, rejoicing and mourning,

I am there too - Rasul Gamzatov.

If only one is crazy

From you, not prone to promises,

Know that it's from the cloud tops

A highlander called Rasul.

If no one is in love with you

And you are sadder than gloomy sunsets,

So, on the basalt plateau

Rasul Gamzatov was buried in the mountains.

Per. Y. Kozlovsky

There are three cherished songs among people,

And they contain human grief and joy.

One of the songs of all the others is brighter -

The mother lays it over the cradle.

The second is also a song of mothers.

With my hand stroking my icy cheeks,

They sing it over the graves of their sons...

And the third song is the rest of the songs.

Per. N.Grebneva

Life is capricious. We are all in her power.

We grumble and scold life.

The more difficult it is, the more dangerous -

The more desperately we love her.

I'm walking the hard road

Holes, ruts - just hold on!

But no one came up with it, by God,

Nothing is more beautiful than life.

Cranes

Sometimes it seems to me that the soldiers

Those who did not come from the bloody fields,

They once did not perish in this earth,

And they turned into white cranes.

They are still from those distant times

Isn’t that why it’s so often and sad

Do we fall silent while looking at the heavens?

Today, in the early evening,

I see cranes in the fog

They fly in their own specific formation,

They wandered like people through the fields.

They fly, complete their long journey

And they call out someone's name.

Isn’t that why with the cry of a crane

Has Avar speech been similar since centuries?

A tired wedge flies, flies across the sky -

Flying in the fog at the end of the day,

And in that order there is a small gap -

Maybe this is the place for me!

The day will come, and with a flock of cranes

I will swim in the same gray haze,

Calling from under the sky like a bird

All of you whom I left on earth.

He wants love, and in the swirling darkness

A crimson flower will bloom on a rock,

And the snow will rustle on the top.

But in a heart of stone at all times

She is unable to sow seeds,

Sloes still sprout in it today.

Love humbled even royal anger,

And the lion suddenly became meek, like a lamb,

The doe grazed nearby, without timidity.

I saw with my own eyes how, without harboring any evil,

A snake dances to the fakir's flute

In a crowded Bombay square.

And quietly love whispered to me:

You act like snake charmers.-

And I recalled a sad incident:

One ballerina recently,

What was wrong with the magic flute?

The snake turned into a rattlesnake.

With words of love, the whole world remembers this,

Great healer and glorious poet,

Avicenna treated ailments.

An enviable fate, a happy destiny,

I would like to write such poems,

Where is the word - a replacement for medicine!

Per. Y. Kozlovsky

And I love the crimson dawn,

And I love the prayer sunset,

And I love honey primrose,

And I love crimson leaf fall.

And I love not at home, but in the wild,

In an open field, on intoxicated grass,

Doze off and lie there until

The month will not bow to its head.

I can do without zurna without chungur

I enjoy the music

Otherwise there would be no point in doing so often

Come to the bank of the stream for me.

I could even manage without shelter

I don't need anything in life.

If only the mountains, their rocks and ridges

They were near my heart.

I'll probably do them more than once

I'll go around, climbing the ridges.

How many unfaded colors are there,

So much pristine purity.

Like a trout, a spring on a mountainside

In crimson specks in the morning.

To wash - in warm palms

I take cold silver.

And I love the noise at the bottom of the chasms,

Turs, throwing back their horns,

Greenery breaking through the rock

And thousand-year-old snow.

And I also adore trees,

I value their children's trust.

I enter the forest as if I were walking through a friend’s door,

As if in a kingdom, I wander through the forest.

I see the flowers of the mountain valley.

The bumblebees took a sip of them just after light.

I worship every handful with my heart

Dear to me from childhood, the earth.

On your knees by the river bend,

I become like a pilgrim.

And even though I stretch my hands to the sky,

I pray to my beloved land.

And I thought, sinful man,

That, having squandered his own years,

I live, appropriating someone else's century.

I thought about this more than once before,

As if repenting on the ridges of Godin.

Is it because there is fog above me?

Blown a farewell crane wedge?

Did I wander through the forgotten gorge,

Have you seen the stream wither in the heat,

Have I met a hunter with a dead man?

A deer that hasn't cooled down on your shoulders.

Did the sunset-winged one look at the fire,

This is not the first time he has burned firewood,

Did you stand in front of a mass grave,

As if with a guilty head.

I remembered the poets again,

That we haven’t reached Lermontov’s years,

But the songs that were once sung by them

To this day they have amazed the world.

Or maybe I took their tight wings

And the word that is related to heights,

How others took their brides as wives,

Ringed under a wedding veil?

And it seemed to me

worthy of freedom,

The obedience of words and the disobedience of rivers,

That, as if you had wasted your days for years,

I live, appropriating someone else's century.

Is it because there are other hopes in the world

The only thing dearer to me is to die in honor.

I am responsible to the memory of the dead,

The executor of those who perished along the way.

Per. Y. Kozlovsky

Following me

I strive, gray-haired man,

Find out what kind of poet you are,

Famous in his youth

Following me.

Are you one of the vaunted shooters?

What if there are no real ones

In your gas cartridges,

Following me?

What do you want to tell people?

Deciding to surprise the whole world?

What do you prophesy for the future?

Following me?

I anticipated myself

So that you, without fear of troubles,

Fire stole from the sky,

Coming after me!

Like in a fight, stay between

Two sabers are no match for you.

Justify my hope

Coming after me!

Showing your behavior

At the foot of the seven planets

Throw down the gauntlet to me quickly,

Coming after me!

And believe me, I’m ready to exchange

Fame is like an amulet

In your youth I

Following me.

Per. Y. Kozlovsky

The prophet said:

There is no god but God!-

I speak:

There is no mother but mother!..-

No one will meet me at the doorstep,

Where the paths meet like scars.

I walk in and see the rosary,

where

She is apart, sitting alone,

I counted the nights, black as gunpowder,

And the days flying from the east are white.

Who will light the fire in the fireplace now?

So that I can stay warm from the road in winter?

Who, loving me, will forgive my sins now

And will he pray for me in anxiety?

I took the Koran in my hands, embossed strictly,

Formidable imams bowed before him.

He says:

There is no god but God!-

I speak:

There is no mother but mother!

Per. Y. Kozlovsky

For the sake of truth

I saw snow in the green mountains

And I met a messenger from the South in the North,

I noticed an enemy in the eyes of my beloved,

In the eyes of the unloved - an old friend.

I went into a close house,

but, I corrected my conscience,

The owner talks to me at night

I agreed with everything, even though I was wrong,

Kunak or enemy - who was sitting in front of me?

Once I wrote something empty in verse,

Is there any merit in shooting into the air?

And my enemy told me the truth about this,

And in his word I felt a friend.

And now, over the years, grieving more and more often,

Consigning other notebooks to fire,

Like an enemy, sometimes I hate myself

And this is salvation, for the sake of truth!

Translation by Y. Kozlovsky

When someone is endowed with a vice,

We judge, and we shout, and we are indignant,

We are a relic of our grandfather's times

We name all the worst vices.

That one is a careerist, and that one is a slanderer,

Cursing people in evil anonymous letters.

But what do grandfathers have to do with it? After all, our language

In those days I didn’t even know such words!

Per. N.Grebneva

If you see a horse, bow down

Dismounted rider

By the will of speed itself,

I’m flying to you in a car:

Meet me soon, my angel!

Where the road is not gentle,

How long ago, young and hot,

I could jump into the saddle from the threshold,

To go on a date at a gallop?

I was really like a daredevil,

When under the spring persimmon

He reined in his horse, prancing:

Meet me soon, my angel!

If it happens, the wind will blow from the meadow

And the neighing of a mountain horse

Suddenly it touches my hearing,

My heart will tremble again.

Even though there is an eternal scream in the heavens

Still floating above my head,

In the mountains the clattering sound is heard less and less often

Iron crowned hooves.

But still there is someone in the village

From a horse under the starry twilight

Will hit the gate with a whip:

Meet me soon, my angel!

And the Caucasian still sings

About the ancestor in the smoky heights,

Like beauties from foreign lands

He brought it on a horse.

He valued the agility of running in horses,

Pushing his hat down onto his brow,

During a restful night

He put a saddle under his head.

And I remember an old man from the area

He said, holding a saber aloft:

Kohl from a car or a carriage

If you see a horse, bow down!

And sometimes everything seems to me,

Why am I driving my horse home?

And the echo echoes over the mountain:

Meet me soon, my angel!

Per. Y. Kozlovsky

Love for you

Years pass, taking and giving,

Either directly through the heart, or sideways,

And don’t cover the calendar sheets

Everything has changed - both dreams and times.

Everything has changed - my village and the globe.

Everything has changed. Only one is constant

The love that came to me that spring.

Where has the storm taken you, my friends?

Just recently you feasted with me.

Now I see my only friend -

The love that came to me that spring.

Well, I will submit to the coming years,

I will give them everything - the shine of the day and the light of the night.

There’s only one thing I won’t give up, even if they don’t ask:

The love that came to me that spring.

People, we get up in the morning and laugh.

Do we know what the day brings us?

The day comes, we curse and swear;

You look, and evening is already at the gates.

Our treasures are strength and courage -

The day takes away from us, leaving...

And calm maturity remains -

Burka worn after rain.

It's time for me to hit the road

My dear, it’s time for me to go,

I don't take anything good with me.

I leave these spring winds,

Birds chirping in the morning.

I leave you the radiance of the moon,

And flowers in the Tlyarotin forest,

And the distant song of the Caspian wave,

And Koisu, hurrying to the sea,

And the highlands, where the cliff presses against the cliff,

With traces of thunderstorms and rains,

Dear, like a trace of lack of sleep and tears

On mothers' favorite cheeks.

I won’t take the Sulak stream with me.

In those parts I will not be able to save

No rays warming your shoulders,

No shoulder-length grass.

I won’t take anything that’s mine from time immemorial,

What my soul has grown to,

Mountain paths twisted like belts

The sweet smell of hay being cut.

I leave you both the rain and the heat,

Cranes, blue sky...

I already take a lot with me:

I take love with me.

Translation from Avar by N. Grebnev

Do I need you, my epic Dagestan,

Don't pray

Shouldn't I love you?

Should I be like a crane in your village?

Be a breakaway bird?

Dagestan, everything that people gave me,

I will share with you in honor,

I have my orders and medals

I'll pin you to your tops.

I will dedicate ringing hymns to you

And the words turned into verse

Just give me a burka of forests

And a hat of snowy peaks!

I happened to see sometimes:

The goldsmiths are my neighbors -

With the help of kazab without difficulty

They distinguished gold from copper.

My reader is an expert on values,

It’s hard for me without your kazab

Recognize the intricacy of lines,

Where there is copper under the guise of gold.

Per. N.Grebneva

It was not I who hatched my poems,

Anything happened, I won’t hide it:

Sometimes a coward smoothed them out with a pen,

The hero minted them from time to time.

The lover wrote them sublimely

And the liar sprinkled, filling with lies,

And I dreamed of lines written,

As they say, by the hand of God.

Per. N.Grebneva

My Dagestan

When I, having traveled to many countries,

Tired, he returned home from the road,

Bending over me, Dagestan asked:

“Isn’t it a distant land that you fell in love with?”

I climbed the mountain and from that height,

Taking a deep breath, Dagestan answered:

“I have seen many lands, but you

Still my favorite in the world.

I may rarely swear my love to you,

It's not new to love, but it's not new to swear,

I love silently because I'm afraid:

A word repeated a hundred times will fade.

And if you are every son of these places,

Shouting like a herald, he will swear in love,

Then your stone rocks will get tired

And listen and echo in the distance.

When you drowned in tears and blood,

Your sons, who spoke little,

They went to their death and swore filial love

The cruel song of the dagger sounded.

And after, when the fighting died down,

To you, my Dagestan, in true love

Your silent children swore

With a clattering pickaxe and a ringing scythe.

For centuries you taught everyone and me

Work and live not noisily, but boldly,

You taught that a word is more valuable than a horse,

But the mountaineers do not saddle their horses idle.

And yet, having returned to you from strangers,

Distant capitals, both talkative and deceitful,

Singing streams and proud mountains."

My friend doesn't write me letters

My friend doesn't write me letters.

I write letters to myself

It's like a friend is writing to me.

I read letters to neighbors

I read letters to neighbors -

Wonderful kind letters,

Which my friend doesn't write to me.

Don't call my region huge...

“Don’t call my land huge,”

On the map he looked like a chick...

But there is a country of love in the world!

Land of love, where are you?..

- I'm here. I am everywhere and always.

I have happiness and suffering in my heart.

A star in your eyes when

Are you in a hurry to go on a date with your beloved...

- But I wasn’t born yesterday

In the land where everyone understands

Like a high mountain

It rests on the firmament of the earth.

What will you rely on?

My Tsadastan, the imperishable country?..

- On the wings of songs and dreams!

My abode is the entire Universe...

- But there are boundaries

Between sovereign powers!

Tell me, who do you border with?

It wouldn't hurt me to know about this...

“Don’t cut me into pieces.”

Remember: like the sun is bright,

Over the continents of the Earth

Love flies, knowing no boundaries!..

- I defended my home more than once,

He defended his burning land.

But is a guard really needed?

The land of undying love?..

- Yes! Love also has enemies.

Take care of your love, please.

Take care of it like a jewel

From everyone who sets their sights on her.

Per. R. Rozhdestvensky

On unknown platforms

I get out of the cars

On short stops:

Suddenly I see you!

In distant lands unknown

At foreign airfields

I go out: suddenly I see her,

What looks like you!..

Shamil's saber was burning

The words, and I remembered them from childhood:

“He is not a brave man who is in battle

Thinks about the consequences!

Poet, let the signs of words be minted

They live next to your pen:

“He is not a brave man who is in battle

Thinks about the consequences!

Per. N.Grebneva

Above Alazanya

I passed over Alazanya...

N. Tikhonov

And I passed over Alazanya.

Above her, rising from the cliff,

On patrol early in the morning

Mountain eagles soared.

They didn't call me back

And they didn’t predict trouble,

Walked without a gun and without sadness

Me, singing as I walked.

As in the old days, the river flew

Behind the shadow of a bird's wing,

But it wasn’t because of the blood that it turned purple -

The dawn fell on her chest.

The forest on the far slope woke up.

And, leaning over the wave,

I took the dawn in my hands,

I washed my face slowly.

And where is the river, wedged into the valley,

Bent a little as she ran,

I met a Kakhetian man,

Mowing grass in the meadow.

Was on Irakli II

He looks like something

but to me

A word from the heart

It had already arrived in silence.

And we smiled at each other,

Not remembering my grandfather's grievances.

Let the horn go around in circles

And friendship will illuminate the heart.

I admired Alazanya.

And the morning, in spite of the darkness,

To the river like a fearless doe

Descended from the Dagestan mountains.

Translation by Y. Kozlovsky

Do not rush

You, waking up at dawn, do me a favor,

Just one more moment alone with yourself

Stay and remember everything you dreamed about last night:

Did you laugh or cry in your sleep?

And look out the window: what's the weather like there?

Is the area foggy or bright?

Does snow sweep to the edge of the sky?

Or are raindrops rolling along the glass?

And if the alarm does not ring at this hour,

In the distance the saklya was not blown away by a collapse,

Take your time and let the devil out of the door

Don't jump, dear, into the mountain saddle.

Take your time, as your grandfathers bequeathed,

And every time, in harmony with custom,

To the stone outskirts at the beginning

Lead your dashing horse.

How often do we, having directed the path somewhere,

We don’t like to take horses by the bridle

And, bloodying their sides with spurs,

We fly faster than the royal messengers.

Our shirts are faded from salt

And drops of sweat pour onto your temples.

We forget to dismount in the field,

Stop near the river.

We have not yet learned to appreciate

High words

and sometimes it’s easy

What they say quietly at the top,

We shout loudly under the mountain.

We should siege the horses the old fashioned way

In front of the village,

reputed to be wise,

To find out whether there is a wedding or a wake in it,

And we fly in headlong.

The slandered heroes have fallen

Not in duels these days,

Whose in belated but holy sorrow

Names are fearlessly resurrected.

Don't make hasty judgments

Don't award awards hastily

So as not to blush, to avoid reproaches,

When you're on your way, you look back.

And courage must control oneself!

Some are hasty, some are windy,

He will return from the battlefield without a horse

Or on horseback without a stupid head.

I am not calling for peace or hibernation,

I myself love the breath of a thunderstorm,

But life is life, not running, not racing,

And in life it is not prizes that are won.

Teach, poet, harsh lessons

And don’t take cities without a fight,

So that hastily written lines

Don’t vomit later, burning with shame.

You sat in the saddle, cheerful or gloomy,

Take your time, don’t contradict your mind,

Halfway, stop, think,

And look back and continue your journey again!

About love

Captured again...

I was once a boy

Love has come and, the rose of armor,

Revealed the secret of her adat

And immediately she made me an adult.

Along the crests of years not in the form of a goddess,

And a woman of flesh and fire

She still comes to me today

And turns me into a boy.

Shyness, shamelessness and trepidation in her,

I light up again, and that’s why

Imagination bowingly sculpts

From a sublunary woman - a deity.

Like the stupidity of the commander, and more than once

Love was fraught with danger

But she showed the courage of a soldier,

That the reckless one carried out the order.

In which we seem to be destined

Already doomed to defeat,

And suddenly - lo and behold! - we won the battle!

It always looks like a battle

in which they believed, but

A message arrives unexpectedly

That it was completely lost.

And although love did not shy away from pain,

She sometimes, without opening wounds,

It was sweet, like a dream under a cloak in a field

During the lullaby rain.

I have reached the border of average age

And, without closing my eyes to anything,

I write poetry as if in the last moment,

And I fall in love as if for the first time.

Translated by Ya. Kozlovsky

About the homeland

I couldn't understand, but now I understand -

And I don’t need any translation, -

What is the autumn flock talking about when it flies away?

Cries so sadly

He sings so sadly.

I used to think that sadness was causeless

At the leaves lying in the dust by the roads.

About their native branch their sadness and sadness -

Now understand,

But before I couldn’t.

I didn’t know, I didn’t know, but I understood over the years,

Already with a completely white head,

What does a stone break off from a rock mean?

So moans and cries

As if alive.

When far from your native land

Fate or the road took you away,

And joy is sad - now I understand -

And the song is bitter

And love is not bright

oh Motherland...

Under the thunder of your bells

I praise your name.

And there are no sweeter words in the world,

And there is no favorite sound.

And if my song ceases

In the night or at dawn -

So this means I died

And I am no longer in the world.

I, like an eagle, soar in the spring

Above your scales.

And these wings behind my back -

Your holy name.

But if he suddenly breaks them

Unkind dark wind -

Don't look for me alive

Then in this wide world.

I am your dagger. I've been in a fight

Rebellious, rebellious.

I will stand for your honor

If the day comes black.

And if your fighters join the ranks

I will not get up in the hour of sorrow -

So that means I'm no longer alive,

I disappeared, disappeared, disappeared.

I'm walking through a foreign land,

I hear strangers' speeches

And I'm waiting more and more impatiently

The minute we met.

And there will be a look from your eyes

Not joyful, not bright -

So that means I won't be alive

Already in this world.

What is this song of carriage wheels about?

And the birds chirping,

And the rustle of birches?

About the homeland, only about the homeland.

About what, sailing away,

Are the clouds sad?

What are the departing ships longing for?

About the homeland, only about the homeland.

In days of bitter sorrows and grave adversities

Who will help us out?

Who will help? Will it save you?

Homeland. Only homeland.

In moments of luck,

During the hours of celebration

What are our thoughts and our words about?

About the homeland, only about the homeland.

Who is connected with both happiness and misfortune

That's why in the darkness

You're shining like a star

O Motherland!..

Revelation of a treacherous wife

Tremble because you forgot peace

I indulge my own revenge in everything!

I'll also show you who I am.

I’ll try to betray the hundred-year-old rumor

Swag, that you have become an unworthy man.

In front of everyone on your donkey's head

I'll replace the butt with a bucket with a garbage can.

I will give the command as soon as I point the gun:

Shave your mustache, good luck,

Now there is no time to tighten them,

Cook dinner, milk the cow!

And if you begin to resist -

the whole village

I'll make you rise, overcome with anxiety,

As soon as I start shouting from the roof: - Guard!

My damned husband wants to solve my problems!

Bow to me like a bush in the wind,

If you want to run away, I’ll immediately rush after you.

I'll skin you like a sheep,

For winter, from which they will sew me a sheepskin coat.

Remember: I am taught to read and write,

It won’t take long to attribute a mountain of sins to you.

And all the police will come to our house,

When I write a letter to the prosecutor.

And, powerful as an exclamation point,

Having demanded an appointment without delay,

I'll hit the table where necessary,

That the glass would instantly shatter into pieces.

You will find out, robber, who is right and who is wrong,

I know the opportunity to take revenge on you.

I can, I tore my clothes,

Enter the doors of the regional committee without a pass.

I’ll quickly find Khizrieva’s office,

Sobbing, I pray:

Patimat, dear,

Save me, I’m dying in the bloom of years,

I am the tormentor of the husband's slave and servant.

I live as under the khan, grieving for the will,

A hundred times this fraction is dearer to me than the grave.

Khizriyev will take your head off -

In fact, she got her hands on this.

But if her hand fails

To overtake you more mercilessly than slaps,

Then I’ll write a statement to the Central Committee,

Where they are sensitive to women's complaints.

Even before the party meeting the answer

You will hold!

I'll take care of it

You will also put down your party card,

Known throughout the world as an inveterate scoundrel.

Then I will divorce you, you fool,

You will remain with your mother-in-law among your father's walls,

And I'll go on a spree with your kunak

And I will start receiving alimony from you.

Remember that a woman is strong in anger,

As in passionate love, and subtle in deceit.

Once upon a time in the old days she

She knew how, when angry, to destroy the state.

I will become your fateful fate

And, with anger, like lightning in the sky, sparkling,

I'll also show you who you are,

I'll also show you who I am.

Per. Y. Kozlovsky

I opened a centuries-old book

Love is fraught with boundaries

Everything, from treason to deceit, -

Many men died here,

Like on the border of a state.

Sad tale sheets.

I opened the age-old book:

Tell me woman where are you

Was there a fateful moment?

Why did you sleep in ignorance?

Blowing out the flame of a melted candle,

When two black trunks

Are you aiming at the black river?

You are indebted to eternity

For having white wings

Then I didn’t stand in the snow

In front of blued trunks.

Wasn't it you at the hour when you burned

A letter whose ashes I squeezed into a handful,

I could have saved the lieutenant

From a stupid quarrel in Pyatigorsk.

And I wouldn’t have taken it near Mashuk

The poet's early grave,

Whenever in the evening secretly

You lured him into your arms.

Whenever by the light of starry eyes

You illuminated the path of return,

I wouldn’t get stuck in a forest swamp

Hadji Murad's hot horse.

Bride from the village of Chokh,

I could justify you

When would I let out more than just a sigh?

I would decide during the wedding.

Why didn't your cry sound?

And people didn’t recognize right away

That poison was poured into the glass

Eldarilava from Ruguj.

More faithful than a faithful talisman,

Among the whirlwind of life

Save us, woman, from wounds

And delusion and death.

But let, suffering and loving,

Dashing worthy of death,

They will be ready for you

Men sacrifice themselves.

Per. Y. Kozlovsky

Wine Bottle Song

Glug-glug, glug-glug!

I know you,

I remember your speeches.

I got ripped off every time

You wear a cap when you meet.

And they knocked over to their heart's content

Above the lower lip

But then control and power

Lost over themselves.

I'm a hail of droplets, glug-glug,

Without unnecessary complications,

Your heads are like a hail of bullets,

Punched hundreds of holes.

Glug-glug, glug-glug -

simple tune,

Heeding his sign,

You then kissed, drunk,

And then they rushed into a fight.

Without hiding my tears,

cursing me

They leaned their foreheads to the table

And they became for me

Obedient slaves.

The chant sounded:

"Glug-glug, glug-glug"

And the wives left

Sometimes it’s not because you

Why did you love me?

I tell you more than once in a hangover hour

Fire poured down my throat

And I sent many of you

For sober bars.

Glug-glug, glug-glug!

the wine was flowing,

And what grief I feel

What's with wallets?

Have you drunk your conscience?

It happened that we saw devils

You with goat horns,

Scolded loyal friends

And they clinked glasses with their enemies.

Many victims

flying from the mountain

The stream carried away cruelly,

But it took me to hell

I am more victims before the deadline.

Glug-glug, glug-glug,

please pour it.

Down with what is not done!

To love me is to destroy yourself,

But this does not frighten you.

Song about a falcon with bells

The sky was black with shaggy sheepskins,

They were all swirling in disarray.

And sat far from my native heights

Red falcon on a white glove.

The catchers gave him bells

And a ring with a gilded rim.

He raised his wings, and again the bells

They filled with silver ringing.

He sat on the glove and knew no worries,

And they fed him like a pet.

He only dreamed of flying in the black clouds

And a rock by the river stream.

He flew home, jingling his bells,

The red falcon, born to fight,

And he shouted to his comrades:

Excuse me,

Why was I sitting on a white glove!

They answered where the thunder rolls

And the fogs swirl on the slopes:

We don't have bells that ring silver,

We don't have gold rings.

We are free, and bells are not in honor with us,

And we value others' habits.

You are not one of us, you are a stranger, fly back

And sit there on a white glove.

Per. Y. Kozlovsky

Believe me, the first mistake is not terrible,

And the first offense is not important,

And the very first fear is akin to fright.

And if it suddenly happened in your destiny,

That the first time a friend offended you -

Don't judge, try to understand a friend.

Probably won't be found in the world

People who have never gone astray

Hearts that have never been shrouded in fog.

And if your friend is in trouble:

He said the wrong thing, the wrong thing, and the wrong time -

Don't consider his mistake a deception.

Friends, what a stupid mistake I curse,

Once upon a time they abandoned me, -

My home is always open for you. Come in!

Everyone who laughed and was sad with me,

I love you as before. I have forgiven you all.

But only me, friends, forgive me.

Carts

Carts of some

they are barely dragging along

Mountain road.

Other leads

They're rushing downhill

Easy and agile.

Youth,

The running of your hot horses

Beautiful and free.

You're pulling the whole world

You're on your own

Miracle underwater.

Carts of some

From afar

Crawling along the road...

Harnessed to them

crooked stick,

Poor staff...

Your horse is fast

By the clouds

Youth, rushing.

Stomp it out

Quick horseshoes

The heart is knocking.

Who will answer me

What kind of cargo is there?

On dusty carts?

Memories

Old sadness

Long years.

Youth,

What's on your supply -

I already know:

Only love

And faith in people

And earthly joy.

As long as the earth turns

I drank the sun like people drink water,

Walking through the highlands

Towards the red sunrise,

Following the red sunset.

In the land of steep and proud peaks,

Where hearts have a special fervor,

I drank stars from mountain rivers,

From the springs of icy saws.

From the blue heavenly cup

In green thickets and meadows

I greedily drank the sweetest air,

Infused with clouds.

I drank snowflakes, where are the paths

Intertwined over the steepness.

snowflakes melted,

On the way, sipped by me.

I drank spring

when about sowing

In the mountains they bake here and there.

Where the North is strong in degrees,

I drank frost the way one drinks vodka.

When I drank thunderstorms, it happened

Whose glory is dear to the lands,

It's like the top edge of a glass,

A rainbow-arc sparkled.

And again the prickly rose hips bloomed,

Hops oozed from the dark rocks.

I, who climbed the steep slopes,

Inhaled the intoxicating smells.

I reveled in the beauty of the earth,

Blessed her lot.

I fell in love more than once, I was killed

And he drank songs as he sang songs.

The nature of the human soul is complex,—

I drank with my friends at the same time

In the hour of joy - a booze of honey,

In the hour of grief - bitter wine.

And if you drank with your heart,

I didn't drink

For fun and pleasure.

I saw the ashes of Hiroshima,

I heard laughter at festivals.

And, blowing sharply, as if on beer,

To blow away the empty foam,

Drank life's essence:

she's not lying

It is true - the essence of life.

I love, and I rejoice, and I suffer,

And I drink every day to the dregs,

And I feel thirsty again

And life alone is to blame for this.

Let me leave the world one day

I did not quench his thirst,

But people thirst for this thirst,

As long as the Earth turns.

Joy, wait, where are you flying?

In the heart that loves!

Youth, where are you in a hurry to return?

In the heart that loves!

Strength and courage, where are you going, where?

In the heart that loves!

Where are you going, sadness and misfortune?

In the heart that loves!

Per. N.Grebneva

Talk

- Tell me,

having gone through my years,

What was the best time?

- Those were the happiest days

My lovely

loved me...

- Wasn’t it, tell me?

such a day

When you cried

without hiding grief?

- My beloved forgot about me.

That day I was the blackest

I call...

- But it was possible not to love at all!

Living without love -

and calm down!..

- It's probably easier.

May be...

But in life

I'm such a day

I do not remember.

Talking to the clock

It's me and the clock in the house. We are alone.

Having reached the bell at the minute,

They struck midnight

And they asked:

Why aren't you sleeping?

This is the sinful fault of women:

Before tonight

She offended me

From which there is no urine to fall asleep.

The clock responded in silence:

This has always happened in the world.

A woman sees in a sweet dream,

How can you not sleep, deprived of peace...

It's me and the clock in the house. We are alone.

Having reached the bell at the minute,

They struck midnight

And they asked:

Why aren't you sleeping?

How can you sleep if the one who is cute

And a sinless earthly soul,

It was late afternoon

Inadvertently offended by me.

Don't worry. It happened that a dream

Suddenly the guilty man lost.

And I didn’t know that I was forgiven,

That the cause of sadness has disappeared.

Before becoming the earth itself.

I'm dying, but no one talks about it

He doesn’t know and won’t come to me,

Only in the heights are eagles squawking somewhere

And the fallow deer are moaning somewhere to the side.

And to cry over my grave

About the fact that I died in my prime,

There is no mother, no friend, no sweetheart,

What is there - and there is no mourner.

So I lay and died in powerlessness

And suddenly I heard not far away

Two people walked and talked

In my native language, Avar.

Midday heat in the valley of Dagestan

I was dying, and people were talking

About the cunning of some Hasan,

About the antics of some Ali.

And, vaguely hearing the sound of my native speech,

I came to life, and the moment came

When I realized what would cure me

Not a doctor, not a healer, but a native language.

Heals someone from illness

Another language, but I can’t sing in it,

And if tomorrow my tongue disappears,

Then I'm ready to die today.

I always root for him with my heart,

Let them say that my tongue is poor,

Let it not be heard from the rostrum of the assembly,

But, my dear, he is great for me.

And to understand Mahmud, my heir

Will he really read the translation?

Am I really one of the last writers?

Who writes and sings in Avar?

I love life, I love the whole planet,

Every corner of it, even the smallest one,

And most of all, the Land of the Soviets,

I sang about her in Avar as best I could.

The blossoming and free land is dear to me,

From the Baltic to Sakhalin - all.

I will die for him anywhere,

But let them bury me in the ground here!

So that at the gravestone near the village

The Avars sometimes remembered

In the Avar word of fellow countryman Rasul -

The successor of Hamzat of Tsada.

Translation from Avar by N. Grebnev

Over the years we change a lot.

Here are three women looking at me.

A city of unique beauty?

Who gave it to his bride

This city is a fairy tale, a city that is a song?

I hear a guitar sounding in the distance.

I confess to you, Santa Clara:

My life is beautiful and rich

Names that are sacred to the heart.

This is mother - do you hear, Santa Clara.

This is the daughter - oh, hush, Santa Clara.

And my sister is in the old aul.

And my wife, ah, Santa Clara!

If only I could create a miracle -

I would set up cities everywhere.

Cities beyond rivers and mountains

I would call them cute names.

If every city were married

With the name of the most beautiful of women,

People could sleep peacefully then

And hostility and wars would disappear.

Everyone would then repeat hourly

The names of your beautiful friends -

Just like in the silence of your boulevards

Until the morning I repeat: Santa Clara...

Tell me how happy you were with the fire

Do you burn in your youth, brother?

Love for a woman!

How, without avoiding losses,

Are you still burning with fire?

Love for a woman!

What kind of answer do you want in the future?

Burn with fire for life?

Love for a woman!

What do you value a hundredfold?

Above fame and awards?

With the love of a woman!

By which he was cast down like a stream,

And are you exalted like a blade?

With the love of a woman!

With what again,

no matter how hard you say,

Will you divide love for a long time?

With love women!

And with what, crazy man,

Then will your life end?

With love women!

Per. Y. Kozlovsky

Comrades of my distant days,

Peers who have lived so little!..

I guess I survived

So that the memory on earth does not die.

Fallen friends on the battlefield -

There were many of you who passionately loved life.

I know: I am the only one alive,

To tell about you, so few who lived.

Translation by L. Dymova

Three sonnets

In Japan I read my poems

In their native language - in a huge hall.

What are the poems about? - they asked. - About love.

Read it again, I was told.

I read my Avar poems

In America. “What are they talking about?” they asked.

And I answered honestly: - About love.

Read it again, they asked.

Know in any understandable language

Poems about our happiness and melancholy,

And about your smile at dawn.

And one truth was revealed to me:

The earth is inhabited by lovers,

And it seemed to us that we were alone in the world.

Say “I love you,” they asked me in Rome,

In the language of his people! -

And I called your simple name,

And they repeated it all around him.

What do you call the one that everyone loves?

How do you say “life” and “deity” in Avar? -

And I called your simple name,

And they repeated it all around him.

They told me: “This can’t happen.”

So that there is only one word in the language.

Is your language really so unusual?

And I can no longer argue with them,

Answered that one simple name

My entire language is replaced by my native language.

No, you are not a dream, not oblivion,

Not a wonderful fairy tale, the light is foggy

My eternal suffering

An unhealed wound.

I will be deaf and blind to deception

But just let your face

It constantly illuminates me

The road, the days, life.

To be next to you,

I'm ready to forget all the songs,

Turn back the earth's rivers -

But I understand, while grieving,

That I found you on earth,

To immediately lose forever.

about poetry

At Maksobsky Bridge

You will hardly forget this night:

On the grass that was blue

We were lying near the village

At the Maksobsky Bridge with you.

The horses were nibbling grass on the slope,

And the moon silvered the hills.

And palms clenched in fingers

We put it under our heads.

Inspirational,

as only children can,

Listen to those who are whitened by snow,

We listened to the screaming of the river,

The rustle of grass, the ringing of bells.

The world was crowned with silence,

Everything was so magical around

So beautiful and so majestic

That delight suddenly overwhelmed me.

And like a mountaineer who notices a guest,

Lights up all the lamps immediately

The midnight sky is a handful

Gifted us with constellations.

I couldn't look at the stars enough,

I couldn’t breathe enough from happiness.

It seemed

I just remembered my childhood,

It was as if a warm breeze blew.

I woke up at dawn -

Not a single cloud in the sky.

And yesterday there was rain and wind,

The world was all in tears of grief.

Who is so high, high

Rising in the sky with a broom

And swept away in the blink of an eye

A sky shrouded in darkness?