into the disastrous pass
Which served Alyp Khara, Aat Mogoidon,
A notorious hero of the Ajarai tribe
With a crooked horn
Drooping down to his beak,
With strong legs,
With a terrible, short-legged ox
Which doesn’t stumble over its tail,
To get up and destroy
The kind-hearted
Tribe of Aiyy-Khan
With the reins on their backs,
The endless
Muus Kunkui khotun pass
With plenty of misery,
The Khan Jaralyk pass
Stretched out broadly
Breathing heavily
A dense mist of blood
As if spraying from a torn,
Bloody throat...
If you turn around and look
Below the sloping rim
Of the eastern, reticulate sky
With cirrus clouds
Soaring and swirling up,
Like the spotty chested wood grouse,
Twisting around
In the dense dark forest:
It had immense woods
With unknown boundaries,
With scaly-barked
Huge trees
With crooked branches,
With trembling leaves,
As if great udagans ladies
In forgotten ancient times
Saw her coming in the flesh
And went out to greet,
Chanting and shaking, praising
Their Ekhsit Mother-Goddess
Who was walking towards them
Rubbing her two radiant
Smooth cheeks as golden
As early beams of my white sun in spring,
With her warm and blessing hands...
If you open up
And look wonderingly
As a nimble horse
At the bottom side –
It had a large lake with an island,
Where a spen dwelled,
Where a goldeneye-duck played,
Reminiscent of an eight-channelled
Khayakh butter block,5
Blessed and then thrown
With a tremendous splash
Into a rocky river...
It had a deep, sky-blue lake
Where a stork nested,
Where a harlequin duck thrived,
With waves beating loudly
Against the sides of its banks
Reminiscent of seven-channelled
Meat blocks
Shaken and swung
Into the bubbling water
Of a white, winding pass...
There is a huge milky lake
Which never froze,
Where a white crane
With rimmed eyes
With colourful feet sang,
Where a crane dwelled,
Where a grebe played,
Reminiscent of a three-channelled
Mould of fresh butter
Spilled out with a kick
From a birch-bark bucket
Into a riverhead...
If you look with curiosity
Of a lean, thirsty
One-year-old, grey foal
At another side –
You see
A grassy, river-bottomed sacred white passage
Hung with horsemane,
As an offering
To Ekhsit Mother-Goddess,
Blessed by Aiyyhyt,
It resembles ridges of a palate
As if the two-legged,
The front-faced people
Came up with a song
To the Upper World,
To the great name of Urung Aar Toyon,
To greet him...
If I quickly shift my gaze,
If I direct my eyes
To the setting, northern sky
With raging whirlwinds,
With plenty of sorceries,
Having heavily pressed
Its stormy bottom:
On
