Street to street, demented signal, line-drawn land
enters the city with open arteries —
where wounds are dressed with the salve of speech,
and the garb of poverty is left to wrap
the entire dissolving body.
I need a dime now to call my misery.
Oh, look, look, clouds disappear once more
at the magician’s hands,
the row of bridges moves over innocent waters
and carries collection ice towards the poor
who are petrified objects, to be misplaced
by chance!
Yet, there was love over there, cribs,
white linen, order and neatness,
now, near the light, a heap of refuse,
a gaze suffering with eyesores
that has lost sight of man,
and the scream of those who’ve abandoned
the love-play of green spike
to look in a statue’s heart for love.
I’ve brought my life for others,
those who live
on steps painted by children
and tree roots,
where there’s always sky with open shutters.
But fading hope has water-wells, where the image
of your face is shattered,
to imbibe this air with battle-shredded marrow,
space leaps in sleep,
brings new links and faces,
land ends in dream. Transfigurations,
hard flowering, deep roots
in the brush of consciousness, where
in sections leading to nature,
there’s life surviving still in secret,
and streets where the gorilla accompanies
the rich man, who seems to appear careless
yet keeps his eye on each house,
while AIDS still veils
his tormented organs.
Oh, this is the hour of sacred loneliness,
where the block is ever awake in his mind,
and moves onward, onward
until the abbreviated petrifaction
of self-built political monuments is reached,
where there’s always dying history
plastered with petrol!
Oh, this nighttime sun, that moves from
the bosom of sleep to the doubt of awakening,
kept itself a stranger!
And what if you cannot confess
near the hairy ear of congress,
the secret matter tormenting you? Oh, blessed Lord,
where are we going in this corner of the universe?
What is that bug-eyed secret spider weaving,
while drinking this land and
silently glaring at everything,
nations, pains, weather reports, entire horrors are funneled
down the planet’s drain,
disposed of, dumped as trash from a mill
where they are now stamping out minds
in the name of a new cast.
–––– ARTEM HARUTIUNIAN
Translated by Tatul Sonentz
Tatul Sonentz-Papazian
Latest posts by Tatul Sonentz-Papazian (see all)
- Battle Everlasting - October 6, 2021
- Beyond Genocide - April 15, 2021
- On the Threshold of the 106th Commemoration of the Genocide - March 31, 2021
Be the first to comment