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 the splendid mouth of the Great Kukhtui6
It had eight-edged, rocky mountains,
Resembling a shaman,
Who had been beating his drum,
Who had been performing healing rituals
Throughout the day and night,
Now exhausted and
Soaring up to the sky...
If I push open
Another side,
If I look at it
With my sharp eyes,
With my wide-open eyes –
On the immense meadow not bound by snow,
Slender, white birches with frills
Grew in a row,
Bending gracefully
Like swans,
Tossing their heads
Like white cranes.
Reminders of khotun-women
Coming in a line
Pausing and stepping to the music
Of a Sakha man,
Shaking in a circle dance
Merrily,
Treading all at once
In long, beautiful fur coats,
With their silver necklaces
Clinking loudly,
With their hat fineries trembling,
With silver plates on their hats shining...
If you look down
The mown, furthest side of it –
Huge, concave rocky mountains,
Shot up
As chestnut stallions
Stood gnawing
With their rusty teeth.
Their ragged cliffs rose up
Pushing – rubbing against each other
As fluffed-up nape fur
Of a six-year-old male elk
Combed backwards and forwards...
A famous pass from which
The kin of Khoromnu-Khan
With large, grabbing paws,
Which seized quietly,
Which pulled quickly,
Ran out unseen
Under the sorcerous bottom
Of the northern, tumultuous sky
To destroy
The tribe of Kun-Erken
Turning them into ashes:
The dry Great Kuktui khotun pass
With fine shapes,
With magical power,
With an offering of a gull
The size of a six-year-old ox head
Stuck on a sacred bagakh post,7
Stretched sonorously along...
Endowed with a soul
By the descendant of Sugeh-Khan8
Ascending from the Sung Jahyn tribe,
Terrible and enormous,
With sorcerous power blazing
On its feathers
The size of a log house,
Biting deadly
From its front side,
Kicking mightily
From its back side,
Hitting powerfully
From its left and right sides,
With a squawking, stony palate,
With a clinking, white beak,
A flight-feathered bearer of