The Residents of the Black Mountains
Jenis Shakenuly’s poem about his homeland
The Residents of the Black Mountains
With a shantung belt,
Girded by a white woolen sash,
My black mountains stand, where the camel's milk flowed,
My cliff is lost in thick greenery.
To the wandering wolf at night,
Don't let it see the gleaming,
Of village kids and lambs.
… Oh, my black mountains, nourished by camel's milk.
My elders,
Whose greasy trousers brushed against the acacia.
In this vast steppe of mine,
My beloved ones, the hoofprints of your steeds remain.
Jenis Shakenuly was a Kazakh poet born in 1961 in the Tarbagatai region of the People’s Republic of China. He passed away in 1985 at the age of twenty-three.
