Nusrat Kasamanli
(1946-2003)
Nusrat Kasamanli (full name Kasamanli Nusrat Yusif oghlu), was a popular poet and publisist. He was born in Qazakh in 1946 and died in 2003 in Tabriz. He studied at the faculty Journalism at the Azerbaijan State University. After graduating from University he worked as a journalist at the newspaper Baku. He was a documentary film producer as well. He was the author of several books such as If You Love (1971), The Black Color Of My Eyes (1975), The Days When I Looked Like Myself (1979), The Silver Dreams (1981), Let Us Talk Alone (1983), etc.
Don’t Cry, My Tabriz, Don’t Cry
Don’t tell me the ways are far too long-
And that there is a river between us.
Some are together,
while we are apart.
One of us shed tears,
one of us got wed.
Speak, you speak louder
don’t deaden your tongue.
It is enough to recite an elegy,
don’t cry, my Tabriz, don’t cry.
Dead are your lands,
they gave us our lives.
And now, before us, the mountains
remain only for looking and sighing up to.
We have tears in one eye
while the other one is smiling.
Clean your tears
and don’t wound my soul.
Don’t cry, my Tabriz, don’t cry.
We are the same people
with the same homeland
but separated into two sides.
But land is not life
to be distributed as we like.
How many times will we say ‘brother?’
Calling each other from a distance.
You arose with the voice of justice,
bellow your words, don’t keep them inside.
Don’t cry, my Tabriz, don’t cry.
Maybe our violets have grown
crooked because of fatigue.
Maybe the land wants
a son for a bridge to Araz?
I hold my hand to you
but my hand touches the wire.
You rely on your own wit,
warlike and bellicose.
Don’t cry, my Tabriz, don’t cry.
There are too many talking and too many gas-bags.
We often seem like chatter-boxes.
How we dare to glue sin
to this sinless Araz!
We get tangled within the wire
in the middle of our Homeland.
You again look at your past.
Don’t rely on anybody.
Wake up, rise and say "Homeland"
Don’t cry, my Tabriz, don’t cry!