Three Poems

By JAMAL KAMAL

Explanatory Note

An explanatory note I have written today
Once again using my old trick.
With the help of indistinct words
I tried to explain something . . .

My boss looked at me attentively
But the explanatory note is ready -- and no violence
will follow
He said nothing . . . He is also writing
Explanatory notes to someone, poor fellow!

Now let's think this thing over,
Don't consider life easy for a man's child.
For perhaps a million years
Mankind has been writing explanatory notes.

Addressing distant descendants,
Man covered stones with runes.
Modern newspapers, magazines, books,
Aren't they in fact explanatory notes?

We live, entrusting our lives to these notes,
Believe in words, phrases, and sayings.
We write explanatory notes all the time
To countless addresses and offices.

We make speeches that are emotional and bold
Our Motherland bends under the yoke of meetings.
But the meetings, talks, resolutions are in fact the
explanatory notes.
Explanatory notes are deemed different:
Their fate is judged by their impotence.

The notes written by governments
Are but the same explanatory notes.

The world is sending explanatory notes
Loading ships and planes with them,
We have sent our explanatory notes
Even to faraway stars and planets.

So, let's think this thing over,
Don't consider life easy for a man's child
For perhaps a million years
Mankind has been writing explanatory notes.

Man is blackening paper, writing letters,
But look at the state of mankind
So many notes, resolutions, agreements.
So much hostility, discord, and distrust.

And now let's look at the matter this way:
Let's leave for a while peoples and nations.
For so long trying to have it out,
Have even two people ever understood each other?

When I looked back at my ancestors, they
As one tried to explain something to me.
I write verses to my descendants, which means
I am writing explanatory notes.

Hey, my noble generation, here is my poem, ready
And if you want to, you are welcome to express
your sympathy with it, and if not -- forget it.
Only forgive your ancestor
Who understood the world but failed to explain it
. . .

JAMAL KAMAL (b. 1938) studied literature at the institute in Bukhara, became a doctoral candidate in philology in 1972, worked as a researcher at the Language and Literature Institute in Tashkent, served as chief editor at the Ghulam Publishing House, and in 1991 was elected director of the Uzbekistan Writers Union, a position he continues to hold. Among his many published collections of verse are Alam Kirar Yuragimga (The World Enters My Heart; 1968 ), Hasan wa Ay (Hasan and Moon; 1974 ) and Qadah (Drinking Glass; 1980 ).

-633-

Don't Play Your Lute, O Singer

Don't play your lute, o singer,
If your playing does not make one tremble,
If it does not entice the soul,
If it does not jab into the heart.

Don't play your lute, o singer,
Singing like a nightingale,
If it does not bewitch the heart
And wake the flower garden from its sleep.

Strum your strings no more,
Think, what are the fruits
If, when rocking and striking the waves,
The waves do not make others rock?

There is no use for my soul at all
From your lute, help me
If, swaying for a moment,
It does not shake the worth of my thoughts.

If your sound wraps around my head,
This is good, but to what purpose
If my beloved does not wrap her hair
Around my neck, making me drunk?

Press not down on the weeping notes,
Breaking asunder the rock of lament,
If it does not make one cry for an instant
With the tears of consolation.

Come, let me drink of pure art,
But it is not good
If, when thirsty and upon drinking,
Its love does not quench one's thirst.

Hey, Jamal, break your pen,
Cease with your efforts at ghazals.
What tunes reach a crescendo,
If they do not dance in your poetry?

The Ghazal of Friendship

For us friendship is the great world
Of true love,
The clear river of felicity,
Flowing in its bosom.

They stretched out their lips to this beautiful river
And became a water pearl,
The flower garden of this Motherland's
Gardens and deserts.

Garden and desert are nothing more
Than symbols of bright friendship,
The marigolds and yellow roses
Of each spring of our homeland.

In our hearts is the ...