The Poet’s Voice by Khalil Reza Uluturk

I don’t want freedom gram by gram, grain by grain.
I have to break this steel chain with my teeth!
I don’t want freedom as a drug, as a medicine,
I want it as the sun, as the earth, as the heavens!
Step, step aside, you invader!
I am the loud voice of this land!
I don’t need a puny spring,
I am thirsting for oceans!

Khalil Reza Uluturk

from Language for a New Century; Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond, edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar (New York & London: W. W. Norton & Co, 2008)

translated by Aynur H. Imecer

Reproduced by kind permission of the translator, via Azerbaijan International.

About this poem

This poem, representing Azerbaijan, is part of The Written World – our collaboration with BBC radio to broadcast a poem from every single nation competing in London 2012.

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Khalil Reza Uluturk1932 - 1994

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