Uyghur Boy
Added 2020-01-09 06:18:56 +0000 UTCI’ll leave here a ghazal from the popular seventeenth-century Uzbek poet Boborahim Mashrab (1653-1711) who was also a Sufi mystic, medieval scientist, thinker and philosopher.
Show your beauty to the intoxicated
ones,
To the moths burning in your love.
From me prayer, and from you
agreement.
My soul is sacrificed to the beloved.
Oh, hard-hearted, if you do not have
mercy,
Cast a glance on the hopeless ones.
I am a burned poor one, show mercy
at last,
To a madman wandering in your
quarter.
Mashrab, saying ‘you’, left this
world,
And put his head on [your] threshhold.
Translation by Nathan Light from original:
Išqiñda küygän pärvanälärgä.
Mändin duadur, sändin ijabät.
Janim täsädduq jananälärgä.
Äy, köñli qattiğ, rähm
äylämäysän,
Qilğil näzarä bečarälärgä.
Küygän ğäribmän, šäfqät qil
aχir,
Küyiñdä yurgan devanälärgä.
Mashrab säni däb käčti jähandin,
Bašini qoydi astanälärgä.
“Orientalist and socialist European critics and local modernizers of poetic tradition often attack male poets who describe boys or young men as love objects, arguing that it reveals the depravity of ‘oriental’ or ‘feudal’ society. In the strict moral economies of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, where official interpretations seek art that reflects social realities, homoerotic interpretations of poetry have been repressed, and the beloved has always been publicly interpreted as a woman. Poetry – particularly valorized traditional poetry – that mentions men as the objects of male desire has been rejected, and such interpretations are rarely even discussed”. (source: Intimate Heritage. Creating Uyghur Muqam Song in Xinjiang)
I wanted to depict a ‘cypress’ of Khotan and Kashgar ‘with musky tresses and wine eyes’, that Turk Beloved of Persian poems... and I love Uyghur culture and music so much 😍
