Khalil Rza Uluturk
(1932-1994)
Khalil Rza Uluturk (full name Khalilov Khalil Rza oghlu) was a popular Azerbaijani poet. He was born in Salyan on October 21, 1932. Khalil Rza graduated from journalistic faculty at the Azerbaijan State University (currently Baku State University). He attended courses for two years studying Literature in Moscow at the Institute of Literature named after M. Gorky. After graduation he worked at the magazine, Azerbaijani Woman. From 1969 until his death, he worked at the Institute of Literature. He obtained his Doctor of Philology Sciences in 1985. On January 26, 1990, he was arrested as a leader of Azerbaijani National Movement against the Soviet Union and was imprisoned for eight months in various prisons in Baku, Moscow and Rostov (the notorious Lefortovo prison). In 1992 he was named National Poet and in 1995, he was posthumously awarded the Istiglal Order (Independence).
Khalil Rza Uluturk published about 35 books (about 20 during his lifetime, and the remainder when his wife collected his writings and published them). His most well-known books include Epos of Love (1961), Prestige (1973), Where is this World Going? (1983), 1937 Still Lives On (1991), Between the Sun and Moon (1992), I am the East (1994). Numerous songs have been composed based on his poems. He died on June 22, 1994, in Baku.
Freedom
I don"t want Freedom
to be given a little bit,
drop by drop.
I ought to break loose and
and to cast off my fetters...
I don"t want Freedom
like a pill and medicine,
I want it like a sky,
I want it like the Sun
and like the World!
Go, leave my homeland,
hey, aggressor!
I am a loud voice of this Land!
I don"t need a weak spring-water,
I feel thirsty of oceans.
One Side is Shah of Shahs, One Side is Tsar
One side Shah of Shahs,
one side is Tsar-
they signed peace treaty by blood,
they tied the wounds of a great nation
by the prickly wires.
The rain came down in torrents,
a storm then broke out.
Araz ran over and the ocean was born,
The rocks of two shores
turned into blood.
The country and homeland
were on fire-
we were cut into small pieces
like changes,
State was lost, the wealth was ransacked-
on that coast and on this coast.
We two parted and burned alive
on that coast, on this coast.
What we have done for strangers-
on that coast, on this coast?