To Motherland Poem by Ilman Yusupov

Chechen Land, every trace that I leave on your soil is fair,
I should like to turn them into food to feed all your roads;
Year in and year out, my body is striving to be light as air,
So it might not, willy-nilly, cause pain with its loads.

He who’s performed the ablution with water from your waterfall
Can hear the voice of your light calm though his ears are shut.
I will take your wind in my arms, like a cat rolled up in a ball,
And I need your hailstorm to grind it in the mill of my heart.

In spring I will throw the log of your sun into the stove of my breast,
In summer, let your doctor, the rain, make an injection into my brain.
In fall, on a thread of cranes I will string the beads of soul in my chest.
In winter I‘ll make a song lace from the grey-haired yarn of your haze.

You have always shared your sinless assets with me, and hence
You know I don’t squander the gifts you send from above,
With the marble of your crescent I am building a blest happy fence,
And with gravel of your stars I am paving the road to my love.

When, death, like a wolf, creeps up to me, and puts out my brain
Remember always, I, too, will want to have this for my own:
The twines of your grass to bind the black neck of my grave,
The white hands of your fog to wash the inscription on tombstone.