Dear Mr. Marshall
Thank you for your letters of solidarity and support. I received them recently, although according to the stamp they were delivered to Pavlodar in June 2014. What to do – there is a CENSORSHIP in prison and not every letter can pass trough. Keep in touch with my son – Askar AIDARKHAN. His English is pretty well, and he will forward your letters to me translated. Alas, I do not speak English.
As you can imagine, fighting against DICTATORSHIP requires sacrifice. We (I and six political-prisoners in Kazakhstan) – we are going along a sacrificial path to create DEMOCRACY and SOCIAL-JUSTICE in Kazakhstan. And if New Zealand PEN supports us – that gives us STRENGTH in STRUGGLE.
As a sign of my sincere gratitude and respect please accept a POEM.
NEW ZEALAND ‘SHANYRAK’
for Lesley Marshall
and PEN-New-Zealand
There is an empty chair in New Zealand –
Kept for me on writers’ congress,
That is the God to turn me –
Back to an ‘environment’, to a writer’s place!
Writer is an armchair worm –
Gnawing science tomes,
Only sometimes he affects –
Having published poems and novels.
And Life, seems to be passing by,
Writer – the life’s contemplator,
Yet he is present invisibly,
On the stricken filed with us.
Writer, he is the THRID EYE –
And he sees through distance,
And contemplates the “SHANYRAK” –
And us, the fighters on the stricken field.
And if in Kazakhstan bulldozer breaks homes –
Family’s asylum, a Holy Hearth,
By doing that they break
New Zealand ‘SHANYRAK’ too!
As ‘SHANYRAK’ is not merely a shelter, roof –
In summer heat, in winter cold,
‘Shanyrak’ is a Segner wheel, given from above,
A symbol of the Sky, the Sun, the eternal motion!
The world is a running Segner wheel –
From the crucifixion till the crucifixion
Christ, He also had been a REVOLUTIONARY –
Social-Justice and Democracy!
Quotation: “And TENGRI sees my soul –
With the eyes of the *Aruakh,
With the Nation’s karma –
I am crucified on the ‘SHANYRAK’!
…There is an empty chair in New Zealand –
Kept for me on writers’ congress,
Wait, my friends, and I will come back –
Not for an empty place!
Aron ATABEK 12.10.2014
Pavlodar, SI-14, solitary confinement, punishment cell of the PKT, c.#36
*Aruakh — Kazakh ‘Ancestor’s spirit’.