Any Liquid Poured into a Vessel…

Any liquid,
poured into a vessel,
rushes to take that vessel’s form
but the word
entering the depths of the human soul
defines it
with its own form.
Night deforms darkness
with its motifs.
In every horse
there is a great horse.
Always,
everywhere –
any voice may exceed
the bounds of a terrible chorus.
By entering the world
we change the world.
It is a skin;
we are its skeleton.
My world,
flickering, coruscating,
like a cosmos,
assumes the shape of the WORD.
The smoke glitters.
The last book has been burnt.
Yet
eternal is the symbol above the ashes
of the letters,
over yurts,
over cooking stoves,
over SOUND that is warped
by the blueprint of ideas.

(date unknown, translated by assiya issemberdiyeva)

source: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/poems/any-liquid-poured-into-a-vessel

olzhas suleimenov (b. 1936) is one of the most important contemporary kazakh poets > suleimenov is also known for his anti-nuclear activism, and his ever so corrupt deal with nursultan nazarbayev in 1995, then kazakhstan’s undisputed strongman, who appointed suleimenov as ambassador to italy