"Foremost You Are a Part of Paradise" by Ramil Niyazov

Translated by Timmy Straw, Elaine Wilson, Konstantin Shavlovsky, and Veniamin Gushchin

Stream and read "Foremost You Are a Part of Paradise" by Ramil Niyazov in Russian here:
User-731151642 – Foremost-you-are-a-part-of-paradise-by-ramil-niyazov-rus

foremost you are a part of paradise
and then you are everything else
why did you collapse in a grave
wood won’t save the body
but blood saves blood

pack for the march ––

1. ruins of hands desires
something remains
still remember what you’re made of
what your mother loved in you
as she looked
into death like a ship
full of sand

2. a pitcher of mountain water
wash the corpse as after making love
hoping the kiss could last longer
than the father
who scatters rose petals
across the steppe

3. spoons –– use their back to scoop out the eyes
from their painted faces
a quarter passing into the void
a half – into the brilliant sunlight

4. forks––to gut each other’s bellies in search
of cockroach joys
like the hands of the tsar the carrion jealousy
that echoes his laughter

5. knives––sharper
than the naked woman
who with a shard of glass cut off her wings
to look like the mother
she saw in the mirror

let yourself bite off an occupier’s head
suck out his blood

you were a part of paradise

please
take me back

and one day
time will flow from the shores of your legs
and a gray wolf brought forth

/his teeth blacker than steel
eyes redder than bullets/

looking like mama
and nothing else