Letter to a fellow soldier

Bahtiyar Hidayet: Poem ‘Letter to a fellow soldier’

Ah, my fellow soldier,
In the winter war,
we wore such thick clothes
that our uniforms were heavier than our weapons.
Yet we are not respected
as much as a singer
who takes off clothes and sings about the “Homeland.”
Their buttocks
are valued more than our lost lives,
our lost arms, legs, and eyes.

Some gave their lives for the homeland,
some their arm, some their leg, some their eye.
But a singer
who sacrificed a rib
for the sake of show business
to have a slim waist
is a hundred times more respected
and more famous than we are.

Do you remember?
No matter how warmly we dressed,
we still froze.
We lit fires out in the open.
As the long logs burned,
we pushed them forward.

Do not be sad, my friend.
One day they will push us forward too,
like long burning logs.

Are you cold again?
Those who gave their lives
are cold as well.
Their bones ache now.

Perhaps we died long ago.
We simply do not know that we are dead,
just as we do not know
that we are alive.

Bakhtiyar Hasanov

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