PagesSectionsFrom the old notebook"A song that is not sung is a horse that is not ridden: it forgets its road." Kinsmen
By year
| The cold winter25 January 2009 The light comes two hours in the evening,
we eat by it like by a fire. The children do lessons by the lamp. In 1943 the lamp was the same lamp. Cholpon says it is not nice to compare. But I am 74, I am allowed to compare. Wedding song for Cholpon's sister2 November 2008 Her sister married a boy from Talas. At the toi I sang the old wedding song, the kerez of the bride, and the young people filmed it on their telephones. Now my voice is in the telephones in Talas. A strange world. Go, my bird, to the city of stone, take the mountain wind in your sleeve. When the city is too loud for sleeping, open your sleeve. How a komuz is made31 August 2008  Apricot wood drying behind the house. Two years until it is ready.The body of the komuz is cut from one piece, a log of apricot or walnut, hollowed with a small adze. Never glued, never joined. The neck and the body are one piece, like a person. The old masters dried the wood for three years in the shade, "so that it forgets the tree and remembers the song". I cannot make one now, my hands are not steady. A young man in Kyzyl-Adyr makes them and sells them at the bazaar for 60 som, and I tell him that the price is a shame, and he does not listen. Nooruz21 March 2008 The first day of spring. Cholpon asks me to write the song we sing at the door, the one that the children sing when they carry the green shoots from house to house: Open the door, open the door,
spring is standing on the step. She has no shoes, she walked from the south, give her a plate of something warm. Open the door, open the door, she will leave a flower in the bowl. I wrote it for the children's group in 1968. Now I hear it in places where I never taught. The autumn without neighbours30 September 2007 The apple is heavy, the branch bends down,
and there is no hand on the other side of the fence. I pick the apples for them. I put them in a box with the name on it. Whoever comes first will not be in debt. Four houses on our street are still empty. I pick their apples so that the wasps do not have a feast. A box stands by each gate. |