Vehanoush Tekian - ARMENIAN CULTURE

In the gaze of a spiteful sun

Two quails rose in a mellow flight,

And the portly village was cuddled

Wrapped in a misty garment;

In the gaze of a wink of an eye

I proceed on my road

To eternity,

Keeping Toros Roslin

To the nubs of tree trunks

I proceed.

I anoint my life next to the feet

Of the saint hung from the gallows

And high on the aroma of thyme,

Passionate, I recite Varoujan!

I come from the diamond land,

Emerald mothers,

Regal fathers,

I know how to jump

Naked from fort to fortress

With incense of wound, song of cymbal.

I’ve tinted my mother’s apron,

She could smell of garlic and milk.

“You are a spoiled

Generation!”

My grandpa was a man of much sadness.

Restless, my grandma, night and day

fashioned shirts

Out of wool,

When she died, on the coffin

Was the shirt woven for me.

Beirut was a warm

City, but

“We were in this cold alien land!”

From the Atlantic

We reached this side

Bellowing freedom,

For heavens’ sake, we busted our souls,

Yet couldn’t be free of the “Odar!”

Hustled and bustled from near and far

Immigrating and emigrating,

In prosperity, in penury,

Grabbing the collars

Of friend, relation,

Educational institution,

Confusion or collision

We got together and scattered,

We protested and were stunned;

It’s a big country, so what?

Our Kochari, our kebab –

Don’t let them dry up!

What good is a fine book?

Pour some wine on it and take off!

And what writer, musician, or

Artist, if they will not –

Faithful to the holy core

Of our history –

Sacrifice or give in,

Shrink, become wacky.

Scholastics-Schmolastics, church,

Blade of Hai Tahd, gate of press

By fire, by sword, by neck,

By meetings overt-covert,

Our great nation

Breathing over eons

Shall survive centuries,

Reaching until…

Until reaching…

See? I forgot the rest!,

Until it reaches…but, is there a path?

Now --If you like -- let us restart:

Cou-ple of qu-ails fu-lew fu-rom the top,

(the ‘f’s start without the ‘u’s).

And if you haven’t seen a quail,

What have you seen? Don’t be denied,

You may well ask, where the heck is it?

It is sunrise, without a quail

Life remains dark!

And if our nutty quail

Had a way to show up,

Why was it hiding

In the history

Of the Green Mountain,

The White Mountain.

The Grandma River,

The cold back of Grandpa Mountain?

Just why

Has it dropped

Its wiggly-waddly chicks here --

not at the river, but the ocean,

not at the shore, but under the heavy paw;

One little quail’s traces lost

The other quail turned into crow,

Half, crow-like, beast

The snout stuck

To the greetings of the chicks,

What’s he up to at the mountaintop…?

If you like,

Let’s restart the story:

Two quails rose in a mellow flight.

Post scriptum:

I looked for and found

The little quail lost without a trace;

I looked for and found it.

At its Amsterdam home,

Watering the flowers.

It opened star-clusters

In a beleaguered land.

In the cold of Armenia,

It stood for bread and hope,

Kept translating ceaselessly

It no longer wrote in Armenian,

Its back to Canada,

It spouted Socrates, Hegel;

Scientist at Harvard,

A linguist from Oxford.

It seized applause and fame

From international podiums;

It was inventor emeritus,

The nameless despondent.

As a famous as architect,

Enjoyed a niche in New York.

It produced images and films

In the streets of Paris.

Did not verbalize in Beirut

Recalling the other quails.

And at the Duomo of Milan,

Outside, sitting on a stone,

It observed the world,

When I approached in great warmth,

“I’m Armenian, just like you.”

It stared at me, vacant-eyed.

I sat down beside and stroked

The broken-backed quail,

It flew away, the wounded quail,

Foreign-winged, mute-spoken,

It flew to another sky.

There were fire-birds here,

And orating crows,

Exotic cranes,

Orphaned swallows,

There were snobbish seagulls,

Self-admiring peacocks,

Many, many woodpeckers,

Countless damn parrots,

There were perceptive owls

And praying cuckoos.

But the quail had departed.

Who had hit it in the back,

The now craw-like quail?

The hole-digging woodpecker?

By now the exhausted eagle?

The cooing cuckoo? The owl of ill omens?

Or the ebbing echo of its suicidal sibling?

What did they want from this little quail?

From its hidden, tiny place,

It extracted light

From dark clouds.

Now there’s a pit where it stood,

The quail has left behind its mountain,

Without the quail the mountain is false.

And what does it do? What does it think?

When with an orphaned wail

I wander around day and night:

“Quail, my soul!

“My quail, my very soul!”

Vehanoush Tekian

Translated by Tatul Sonentz

Vehanoush Tekian - MY MOTHER

The meager melodies of spring boughs

tap on my mother's window

and the life that carried many futures

now hugs only this bed

of iron   

a bed as supple as an athlete

Blue-clad machines trace

the incense of my mother's heart

and her blood's prayer

In between the traffic rush of nurses and doctors

from morning till night

white doves with white rays flittering     

flickering   

whisper white things

Sometimes you recover in an instant

then waste lingering hours

thinking about what you really want from life

if not your mother's presence

snug and nestled by the window

the rosebush looks at you

with a stupid gaze

In this giant quivering hospital

the birth of the future ceases   

benumbs

You don't know whether it will abort

or throw you back into the world

All the human race seems to be on a stretcher

or bearing a stretcher

or leaning on a stretcher

To bear it you return to the slits

of sec ret universes from where peaks of love

and chasms of yearning and scorching chains

of penitence depart brushing against each other

like slippers

Mother Mother Mother Mother  

I repeat mechanically not to lose that word

Her hair smells of winter heat

her gentle breath has fallen on jaundiced city lights

In old days

under the stout Lebanon sun

humming songs of romance she washed

the wool of our beds

The quilt maker dropped by

she watched attentively

lest he left her with a bungled stitch

Needlework must loom like an arch of flowers

through which our childhood passed

"Life is not so warm faultless and easy"

she claimed 

 "but the train must always pass by

without clamor"

(But I made all possible noises

I didn't want the Armenian woman's derailed train

to pass as a normal case)

Mother didn't have an opulent foliage of speech

her words were seed of life linked to philanthropy

to being " useful children to God and our nation"

She was heedful and eternally patient

Now the pillow is hard   

she doesn't demand another

she'll freeze under that sheet   

she wants no other

without a home   

crochet bores her

white arms surrendered to plastic tubes

she sleeps

With those naked arms

from a big bowl she gave us yoghurt

by the spoonful with bits of bread

on summer nights having gathered her five chicks

(she called us chicks although we made all kinds of

unchickenlike noises and since she's our mother  

in her eyes we always

remained teeny weeny chicks)

"A spoonful for you   

and a spoonful for you

get over here   

you're running around too much

yoghurt is good for the bones"

Below in the Arabic cafe Frank Sinatra sang

"Strangers in the Night"

or Wadih Safi lamented his broken heart

Our village was no Baabdad to push Armenian songs

Instead of bamboo shoots there were wicker chairs

near the stream that divided the cafe

where I read Charents  

Dante  

Dostoevsky

"You'll destroy your eyes at an early age" she said

I used to bring raw liver from the butcher

near the only church

she fried it with lots of onion and cumin

and at that moment in the big village

our little house jumped for joy

I grew so easily with my mother's truth

Through my father's many shades

and our numerous needs

she went on sowing light in clusters

Raven-dark hair

emerald eyes on snow-white radiant face

Your mother is a beauty they said   I rejoiced

She paid no heed -- specially after being born again

The more she clung to God's truth

the more I held on to life's mystery

She became an island of peace  

I stormed like the wind

My memory is littered in heaps

with the springtime mothball smell of our house

the baked Kata of winter

the summer packing ready for the resort

the autumn list of textbooks

in her hands

and most of all the cream of her warm words

is everywhere   

with bubbles of sweetness and anger

haunting the night

in the frightening animation of hurried footsteps

and suppressed sighs grows the terror

of seeing this bed empty tomorrow

as she had found my father's bed empty

when she had gone to hospital to bring him home

Later she missed my father a lot

we could feel her thinking of him

Now all depends on the whim of one tenuous vein

will blood reach her heart or not?

"God plans our lives -- all things come to an end"

The enormous city rotates its hand to morning

I flee and take refuge

where the cock crowed at twilight

where stars were toys and

toy elephants were breathing creatures

Life evolved in the washroom of routine

with its multicolor clothes

It started with Matin

and ended with father's homecoming

a love that skipped the stations of logic

conquered banishment   poverty   sickness

Now plucked from the soothing waves of her birthplace

she lies on this bed

"in some distant corner of America"

Surgeons specialists mill around

they check the temperature   

draw blood

administer a variety of medications

and standing in for my father

the blue-clad machine watches over her

She should at least open her eyes

unleash her gentle laugh

spoon feed me the yoghurt of wisdom

and not push down my throat

the image of her coffin

where I burn away down to the bone

drop by drop her minutes barely extend life

and the vapor of an orphan drips from the mute forehead of a giant

Surely I wouldn't be so terrified

if they hadn't told me

that they would take her heart

out of her body

that they would cut her veins

put in a pig's heart

God bless and save all the planet's piglets!

Were it not for my mother I wouldn't fear

for my life Our lives ounce up and down inside her weary heart

Mother   

you who passed through our nights

spreading rays of the Milky-way

save us from this night too!

Tears in its eyes   

the rosebush

watches those emerald eyes almost lose their green

Early in the morning they'll take her to surgery

I know she is not asleep    

with words of milk and honey

her fierce mystical faith

begs for her God's mercy

to remain in her children's charge

The time for the ultimate submission arrives

facing this breach   

when pain turns to spirit

and the moment to supplication

and trampling the agony of hopelessness

I too pray that mother reaches us

through the dawn with luminous devotion

and rose-petal soft steps

Vehanoush Tekian
Translated by Tatul Sonentz