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- God Leaves the Earth
- Two Stood Apart
ll
- The Song of the Star
- Turning to the Star
- Altay Mountain
- Bozkurt, Moon, and Tree
- The Bozkurt's Flight
Earth had been created, [1]
sky had been created;
between earth and sky,
man had been created.
In man´s heart, many desires
had been created.
God Ulgen wanted men to live in harmony,
but they forgot God
and gave way to dark Erlik
whom God Ulgen threw into darkness.
God Ulgen went up to his sky-floors,
leaving men lonely;
went up and called his messengers up,
leaving man alone.
This leaving, God´s leaving,
whitened the sky and darkened the earth.
The peoples left alone,
felt pain from dawn to dusk, from dusk to dawn,
and had enough pain.
They looked to the blazing sky
and saw God´s wing
and there found shelter.
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But two people stood apart [2]
,
two people thought.
Men had become evil,
forgetting God, serving Erlik.
Man and earth grew ugly together,
had no beauty, no happiness in them.
These two people, thinking apart,
thought "Better to leave them,
better to live in deserts and mountains,
live there and raise a people,
a people taught goodness and beauty."
These two people were Ay-Atam [3]
and Ay-Va, his wife,
his wife and two daughters;
the two daughters obeyed their mother,
and mother and daughters all obeyed Ay-Atom.
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He said:
"There goes a road;
at its end is a place
where no bird sings,
where no waters flow,
where no chimney smokes;
there we shall go.
"
Ay-Atam stood beneath God Ulgen´s wing,
the great white wing stretched
in the skies of blue without end;
Ay-Atam stood and fixed his eyes on God´s wing.
His unshadowed eyes, spotless,
naked as the day he was created,
Ay-Atam´s eyes trembled;
then the wing shook light into his eyes.
Not understanding,
yet Ay-Va said: "I will go."
Thus the people to bring harmony was born;
had she not said "I will go,"
the unborn people would have withered in death.
Ay-Va and her daughters slept.
The moon-faced, day-breasted girls slept.
Ay-Atam´s eyes saw a star,
a burning star, a star of flowing water,
a star of summer nights,
a star that seemed to speak,
but Ay-Atam could not hear.
He shouted: "Speak, star!"
and woke Ay-Va who said:
"In my dream, I heard a song,
a song distant a hundred years—
`You are born again, star,
yellow star, hey! Blue star;
morning came, evening came,
day wandered, evening came,
the Pleiades pass not!
Seal ring on your finger,
gold bracelet on your arm,
why were you born yellow
star, blue star, star, hey!´"
A cosmos filled her;
she could speak no more.
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The girls woke screaming "The star!"
They leaned together and saw stars,
stars moving within moving stars;
the star that spoke flowed in a bright line
,
flowed and split as the other stars split also;
half the brightest star went north, turned west,
the two halves stopping at the western sea,
stopping in silence, then becoming one star,
one five-pointed, gleaming star.
The crescent moon cupped that star,
star and moon shining red,
a red light embracing land and sea
as moon and star turn gleaming white.
Ay-Va, Ay-Atam and their daughters
turned to the southwest,
turned to star and moon,
turned and left the evil behind
,
turned and went toward dazzling red and white.
They passed through mountains
bright with dawn,
they slept in fields under star and crescent,
days they passed through desert
,
leaving evil behind.
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Finally they reached a mountain, [4]
A mountain below a half moon.
Ay-Atam said:
"This mountain below the moon
is a moon, set on earth,
reaching to sky.
The girls shouted
the mountain´s name:
"Altay! Altay!"
Mountain echoes came: "Altay,"
a voice spreading to moon,
to earth, to sky,
a deep, a humming voice:
"Altay!"
Night came from the mountain,
with night, came a voice from the mountain,
after the voice, came a man:
"Who are you? Who are you?"
From a cave in the mountain came a man,
came a friend, not a stranger—
Doganay.
Açe, too, was in the cave,
old and wrinkled,
old and dried from her sin, the first sin.
Hers sons and daughters filled the cave.
Ay-Atom said:
"Doganay,
after we were expelled from our home,
when we wandered, where did you go?"
Açe, hearing this, hid in a corner;
Doganay said:
"She, she is heavy,
heavy with shame,
thinking that through her
all men are wronged.
But if she had not,
someone—even I—
if she had not eaten the fruit,
someone would have.
Though he forbade us,
God really meant
that we should eat the fruit.
"In guilt, we left the other people,
and, suffering, came here."
Doganay and Açe
made a place for Ay-Atam and his family.
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Ay-Atam dreamed,
dreamed of Altay,
dreamed of the mountain beneath the moon,
the mountain that was itself a moon—
Altay stood, dark against dark night;
at the highest peak, a Bozkurt howled, [5]
a Bozkurt within a wide blue light
shouted strange, unheard sounds.
From the feet of Altay,
a moon climbed, climbed from Ay-Atam´s
swelling chest; tumbled and turned
and climbed to the Bozkurt;
the moon brightened
before the Bozkurt;
white lights covered all things
that Ay-Atam saw.
Then the lights went,
then the wide blue light went out,
then the Bozkurt was silent.
The moon´s light flowed
to Altay´s ridges,
to an oak sapling
that greened and spread,
spread and became a huge tree,
huge as Altay,
fertile with moon beams,
blessed as was the first tree.
Ay-Atam rose,
feeling the moon, feeling the tree,
within his chest,
no longer a tree but a vast people:
Ay-Atam sang to the tree:
"Tree standing
in the light of God Ulgen´s eyes,
tree that is the door
to God Ulgen´s house,
tree that spreads
to bridge the waters,
ship of darkness and darkened seas,
of fearless men, fearless women;
you were needed in our land."
The tree answered:
"I am in your land,
in your land;
I am in you, in you—
I am you,
am you,
you."
Ay-Atam woke,
still dreaming his dream,
awake in his dream before Altay.
Doganay had put his back to the cave,
had turned to the sun,
had turned and now dawn spread from his body,
spread from his body to fill the cave.
Doganay turned to Ay-Atom:
"I know your dream,
I also dreamed and know
the tree is you,
the tree´s branches
are your generations.
"
Ay-Atom said:
"So I saw it,
but was embarrassed;
what shall I do?"
Doganay answered:
"I thought first your daughters
should mate with my sons
but I know now they must marry,
marry a deathless one.
Leave the godly maidens alone."
That evening they built a tower,
a tower of branches on Altay´s peak,
and shut the girls there,
shut the daughters alone on the peak
.
The girls waited.
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From night within night, Bozkurt came,
his eyes like dawn,
his look like the hope of dawn,
his feathers and hair aflame
with the dawn in his eyes.
Around the tower,
around its four sides he went,
then he stopped—
his eyes´ light now was blood,
that melted like iron
and flew to the tower´s top,
flew in two drops of light,
a drop clinging to each girl,
drops of light from Bozkurt´s eyes
making each girl a star.
Bozkurt sped to the steepest,
to the highest rock of the peak;
the moon-the fearless, godly moon-rose
,
the moon´s light twined with the wolf´s light.
The moon at Altay´s peak, the wolf at the peak,
both became one before the girls.
Bozkurt called the moon,
called with love, called with strength,
his call frightened silence;
the gaps were being filled—
filled with wolf-light, with moon-light,
filled with the song of the Bozkurt.
Nine nights long Bozkurt howled;
nine nights long-girls, stars, Altay-
all things seen, all things unseen,
heard his song.
The ninth night ended,
the time had come-trembling together
the girls left the tower;
trembling together,
they mounted Bozkurt;
earth trembled, sky trembled;
Bozkurt trembled.
The trembling ceased;
before Bozkurt was a void, a deep gap.
Toward it he flew.
No man could grasp this awesome flight,
but the girls now were more than human—
now they were Bozkurt and gap and sky and Altay—
now they were holy,
these daughters of Ay-Atom.
The girls gripped Bozkurt´s mane,
gripped with joyful madness
as they flew through the dark gaps
between sky and Altay;
together with Bozkurt they shivered in ecstasy—
with a last godly howl he filled the world,
filled the world with joy,
filled it to fullness and beyond.
Bozkurt and the girls hung in the sky,
Bozkurt and the girls became one;
their howl was the first voice
of the people of harmony—
all day, between gaps and sky and Altay,
they stayed, flaring with pleasure,
sizzling with daylight.
Bozkurt and the girls became a ball,
a ball of blue light—
no more were they Bozkurt and girls;
they became the ball of blue light
floating and riding the soft breeze;
the light consumed Bozkurt and the girls
with its soft and silent speed.
The ball of light dazzled,
it turned, it sped—
it became whiter than fresh milk;
then it flowed west,
west toward Hulin mountain;
flaming, it burned the night clouds;
flaming, it climbed night clouds and sky
made the clouds a stair to climb Mount Hulin.
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