Chapter Nineteen
Has summer come?
In your life you’ll still write another
Twenty-five books in the little square
among the mass of stone, ugly memorials.
Some concrete piece, the existence of a memorial
left by the builders,
turns into the absurd
as though, yes, say as though, in as far as
even if the thought ends
the yearning to continue it
does not end.
Shall I go into the dining room
and soak my hardened
brains in tea
so as to pour into my thought?
Here no one needs you,
but this is just the width and the length
of the fact that you need no one.
-Belgi
The Uzbek authorities’ account of the explosions of February 16, 1999 appeared on the same day when, literally only two hours after the event, President Karimov gathered together his team of state functionaries and dec
