Untitled - Azam Abidov - poet and translator

I’ve flown away, I know. I’m a cruising hawk.
I have clawed hands and open eyes
for mole, bear, fox and the family of the doe,
and for my shadow, which spreads over the grass
as if it wasn’t mine ... And it is! So, it’ll do no harm.
I know my shadow, and that other too.
Beside me there’s a real hawk circling. He trains his claws
and drops – it’s death
for the young bird. Diving sheer,
the attacker seizes him straight from the nest.
“He left his feathers after him!” cries
11-year-old Renatka. In her eyes I see
that she observed
the drama. The parent birds above the crown of the spruce
let loose a screech. Magpies, they fly as if deranged,
while the feathers, now already no one’s, falling,
feint in the air ...
Under their baton
begins
the tuning of the trees in the afternoon breeze.
And that is almost all ...
No more, I think, will ever remain of joy.
Of the comet not that much.
This very moment, from the sky
it is persuading me. Already it’s quenched.
What will remain of me? Thus far I’m holding. Still
I find a form of utterance.
While I write this poem,
on my right arm a drip goes to the vein.
So I’m writing with my left.
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