The Women’s Prison
Autumn was a jumble of colors
staining our clothes as we walked the road
In the clay-bedded stream beside us
God’s cold water was flowing
In the water swirled leaves with holes
We passed a wide bare enclosure
A red light on the gate was shining like Satan
Qasimjan pointed
—That’s the women’s prison
His friend Rozakhun grinned
—I wouldn’t mind being locked in a cell full of women
The body of the land was in pieces
The roads were stitching them together
Cold air was leading its kin
down from the mountain
A sudden shiver went through me
November 2015, Kashgar
Your Unknown Place
Here people’s names were not contagious,
we said they were, it came to be.
There was no sand here growing roots,
we said there was, it came to be.
Here time did not drip from the walls,
we said it did, it came to be.
Here loneliness did not multiply,
we said it did, it came to be.
Here a thousand eyes did not fleck the skies,
we said they did, it came to be.
Here there were no fugitive forgettings,
we said there were, it came to be.
Yet our words could undo nothing here,
even the things we brought to be.
February 2016, Ürümchi
Sitting in the Sun
Why can’t my right hand hold the air
it must be losing life
and on the balcony the sun spins through the sky
Now I’ll never mention wellsprings
for better or for worse
but light recedes from the trees below
I’ve piled certainties beside me
tossed probabilities down below
and closed myself completely
Oh foolish disciples near and far
Oh basket carriers of water from cloud to cloud
Carry on your conversation and don’t block out my sun
12 May 2018, Virginia
Somewhere Else
Besieged by these discolored words
within all these disordered moments
the target on my forehead
could not bring me to my knees
and also
night after night
one after another
I spoke the names of ants I’ve known
I thought of staying whole
by the road or somewhere else
Even
cliffs grow tired staring into the distance
But
in my thoughts I trimmed your ragged hair
with two fingers for scissors
I splashed your chest with a handful of water
to douse a distant forest fire
Of course
I too can only stare
for a moment into the distance
28 May 2018, Washington
A Hungry Ghost
On its forehead a trace of soil
I read its crooked mouth
spoke the holes of its eyes
listened to its icy hands
lived its entire life once through
ravenously
hesitantly
On the soles of its feet the mark of stones
12 February 2020, Fairfax
Five Poems
Tahir Hamut Izgil
translated from the Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman
Click here for poetry by Tahir Hamut, translated from the Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman, in our Winter 2017 issue, and here for poetry by Merdan Ehet'éli, also translated from the Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman, in our Fall 2015 issue.
Listen to the original read by the poet:
These poems span five years and two worlds. Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut Izgil grew up in Kashgar, in the south of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Educated in Uyghur through high school, he became fluent in Chinese during college in Beijing, where he also helped organize his university’s delegation to the 1989 Tiananmen protests. In the 1990s, Izgil’s promising teaching career was cut short: having been offered a scholarship in Turkey, he was arrested while attempting to cross the border out of China. After confessing under torture to a political crime, Izgil spent three years in confinement: first in prison, and then in a labor camp. On his release in late 1998, he began a new career as a film director, and soon gained considerable recognition for his dramas, music videos, and documentaries. In 2017, having rebuilt his life following his imprisonment two decades earlier, Izgil was faced once again with the prospect of indefinite detention. That year, the Chinese state began the mass internment of its Uyghur population, with a particular focus on intellectuals, as well as previously imprisoned or investigated individuals. Izgil, who fell into both categories, fled to the United States with his family. They now live in Washington, D.C.
All the while, from college in Beijing to a labor camp in Kashgar, from a filmmaking career in Ürümchi to exile in the United States, Izgil wrote poetry. By the early 1990s he had achieved some recognition as an important young poet, and following his imprisonment he once again began publishing his verse. As his film career flourished, his poetic work began to trail off, and by 2010 he had largely ceased writing poetry. Five years later, however, Izgil experienced a midlife literary renaissance, embarking on a period of intense poetic productivity that continues into the present. The five poems presented here date from this period. “The Women’s Prison,” composed in Kashgar, evokes Izgil’s own prior imprisonment near his hometown; the more abstract “Your Unknown Place” was composed in Ürümchi, the Uyghur region’s capital city, where Izgil lived for decades. The later three poems were composed in the United States, where Izgil has emerged as a major voice in the Uyghur diaspora. “Somewhere Else” deals most explicitly with the condition of exile, and with Izgil’s wrenching experience of watching his native land’s anguish from afar. And yet, defiance rings out clearly: “the target on my forehead / could not bring me to my knees.”
All the while, from college in Beijing to a labor camp in Kashgar, from a filmmaking career in Ürümchi to exile in the United States, Izgil wrote poetry. By the early 1990s he had achieved some recognition as an important young poet, and following his imprisonment he once again began publishing his verse. As his film career flourished, his poetic work began to trail off, and by 2010 he had largely ceased writing poetry. Five years later, however, Izgil experienced a midlife literary renaissance, embarking on a period of intense poetic productivity that continues into the present. The five poems presented here date from this period. “The Women’s Prison,” composed in Kashgar, evokes Izgil’s own prior imprisonment near his hometown; the more abstract “Your Unknown Place” was composed in Ürümchi, the Uyghur region’s capital city, where Izgil lived for decades. The later three poems were composed in the United States, where Izgil has emerged as a major voice in the Uyghur diaspora. “Somewhere Else” deals most explicitly with the condition of exile, and with Izgil’s wrenching experience of watching his native land’s anguish from afar. And yet, defiance rings out clearly: “the target on my forehead / could not bring me to my knees.”
Tahir Hamut Izgil is one of the foremost poets writing in the Uyghur language. He grew up in Kashgar, an ancient city in the southwest of the Uyghur homeland. After attending college in Beijing, he returned to the Uyghur region and in the late 1990s and the 2000s emerged as a prominent film director, best known for the groundbreaking drama, The Moon Is a Witness. His poetry has appeared in English translation in The New York Review of Books, Asymptote, Gulf Coast, Berkeley Poetry Review, and elsewhere. In 2017, as the Chinese state began the mass internment of Uyghur intellectuals, Izgil fled with his family to the United States. He lives in Washington, D.C., where he continues his work as a poet and film producer.
Joshua L. Freeman is a historian of twentieth-century China and Inner Asia, and a translator of Uyghur poetry. He is currently a Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow at the Princeton Society of Fellows and a lecturer in Princeton’s East Asian Studies Department. He received his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2019, and is now working on a book manuscript entitled Print Communism: Uyghur National Culture in Twentieth-Century China. His translations of contemporary Uyghur poetry have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Southern Review, Asymptote, Crazyhorse, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. For more of his translations of Uyghur poetry, follow him on Twitter @jlfreeman6.
