4 December 2011 A funny song for the New Year concert, in the style of the old tractor-station songs:
Oh my Belarus, my iron brother,
you ploughed this field for thirty years.
You coughed, you stopped, you started again,
you were like our mother-in-law.
But you are rust now at the end of the field,
and we all come to say goodbye.
The audience in Kyzyl-Adyr knew the tractor. Everyone had a story. The mother-in-law verse was cut by the district office. I sing it only at home. 9 October 2011 My father planted it in the year of the famine,
when nobody planted anything.
The neighbours laughed: who will eat it?
Eighty years they have eaten it.
 The tree this summer, still giving.19 June 2011  The meadow behind the beekeeper's house, June.My friend keeps bees on the other side of the hill. His father and I were boys together; we stole apples together and we were punished together. Now the son keeps the bees, and the friendship came with the hives. He says bees are like akyns: they all sing at once and the honey is the result.
On Sunday I went to taste this year's honey. Every year he says: "This year it is better," and every year he is right. Linden and clover, a little thyme. I brought a jar home. The dog sat in front of it for an hour. 6 March 2011 My family gave me a telephone. It is small and grey and it plays a tune when someone calls. I do not like the tune. It is not a tune, it is a sneeze. Cholpon changed it to a komuz, but the komuz sounds like a toy.
Last week it rang in the middle of the aitysh rehearsal. I answered. It was my grandson, he asked: "Grandfather, can you hear me?" I said: "Of course I can, I am three metres from you." It was a different grandson, in Talas. I will never understand. 12 September 2010 A shepherd from the high pasture married a girl from the village last Saturday. They asked me for a song. I had none for a shepherd, so I made one at the table, between the lamb and the tea:
You counted sheep, now count the days,
the days are fewer than the sheep.
But a day with her is a hundred sheep
and nobody has ever stolen it.
The groom wept, the bride laughed, the sheep stayed outside in the yard and listened. |