Mukagali Makatayev: Kazakh Land By

Behold! Behold! Behold! Sacred and bountiful land!

Batyrs battled across this land.

Lovers loved each other on this land!

Bards lamented when they lost this land.

The scent of it seeps from its dust.

Do not pass blindly without a bow!

This territory,

this right region

right here

I thank my life for being lived.

I bow to the sand.

I bow to the billowing steppe!

I give thanks to Thee forever,

that my life in this Motherland I lived.

It burns through life’s bright summers.

Winter wraps me in its frost.

Spring-rebirths the flowers of youth.

Fall—the grain falls in a white deluge,

fills the threshing floor and then the bins,

bread, warm and brown from the tandoori’s cone.

Here the horizon’s sweeping beauty

with vastness wearies the eagle’s wing

and worries him unwilling to his rest.

Translation by Dana Abdikadyrkizi, Karligash Mendibayeva, and Wallace.