Daniel Varoujan - TO THE ASHES OF CILICIA

Stranger, let us go up that mountain facing us,

Alongside which, weeping through the reeds,

Flows the Sihon, where tomorrow scarlet shrouds

Shall be washed by our mothers in tears.  Hurry, stranger,

My bare feet are blistering on the burning ashes

And the skirts of your long mantle are becoming soggy

In the spilled and scattered entrails.  Hurry, stranger…!

My scorched staff directs you to the path of my reason --

To see the city, the villages and fields, and the shores

Along which passed the Infernal Race astride Attila’s stallion.

There rises the smoke and flare the flames – as I speak --

Up the hill, crawling afloat with the wind’s breath, withering,

Then again, like a tongue, they swell towards the peak.

The very soil simmers -- behold, the riled horizon around us

Is a blazing wreath, at the center of which, shivering,

We stand out like outlandish mourning specters.

Do you hear the wail of far distant reeds burning?

Amongst them are now are carbonized the forest’s fairies.

What an aromatic rattle emit the branches of orange-trees,

While vineyards turn to ashes -- what wails of cooing doves!

The flame goes forth, and the wind follows on track,

Carrying the charred weeds and storming up the summits.

Oh, quivering nakedness of the moles’ furrows, which,

Like hedgehogs, make their appearance in the fields!

Oh, the ruined remnants of huts built on the hills,

Whence emerged the Armenian peasant with morning pleas,

To awaken the earth’s creativeness with his spade!

Stranger, do you see how today those huts await,

Ruined and silent, the very first eve of mourning to wet,

In the moonlight, their own ashes with their own tears?

Their roofs were brought down on the lit lanterns within;

The docile doors, that the mere breath of a breeze could open,

Fell bludgeoned under the bloody maces of the mob.

And those walls, thrusting upwards like toothless jaws,

Now breathe out flocks of souls soaring towards the skies.

Fields covered with ashes, and corpses on the road --

On that very sun-bleached road that led the alert race of Aram

Eastward, carrying the gods and the fertile concepts of Europe,

Piled high on mules, for proliferation in the Orient.

Martyrs by the fountains, martyrs in the furrows;

And there, beyond -- where now descends the sun --

Facing that rising rock, they have crucified seven stripped males;

The blood from their hair (stranger, please, shut your eyes,

And only pay heed to my voice), the blood from their pierced

Hands and feet irrigates the ground, tinting the rocky soil;

It seems the departing sun sinks, ever so mellow and slow,

Into their large eyes frozen wide open with horror.

The executioners have since vanished into the dark --

Peace! Hosanna to the highest crimson hued heights…!

Oh, how my jaws chatter in utter terror!  Turn right and see

The city, sitting in these sorrow-stricken fields, spewing

Smoke from its heart -- now an altar of burnt human offerings.

The dawn of freedom had hardly tinted its pallid brow crimson,

When under its rock-solid base the Hamidian dragon

Shook new shoot and shoulder, while the barbarians, spitting

At the sun, seeds of demise in hand, arose sneering,

And half the city rose and razed the other half.

Under the felonious flare of the scimitar and truncheon,

What genius had erected was swallowed by mounds of cinders.

Where are now the temples, under whose scented domes,

The swallows had just warbled their spring prayers?

Whither the schools and the palladium of future lights?

Incinerated hearts of children there smolder as incense.

Whither the immaculate baths, whose polished marbles once

Reflected the virgin bodies of maidens at their ablution?

Whither the magnificent tombs, the majestic monuments

On which the likes of Hetoum inscribed their conquests…?

Death and cinders!  Behold! Only blackened bastions now linger

In the waning twilight, calling upon moaning owls’ whimper.

Stranger, awaken now the past of this Land of remembrance,

And bewail the century of yet another Race, and ponder

Upon the day, when on the slopes of the Taurus toiled

A diligent people who sang of the divinity of life.

Its caravan marched on to flood each hut with the good wheat --

Wherever a humble light flickered on.  Its caravan passed,

As, star-like, the jewels of Tarsus hailed into the matrons’ laps.

And that mountain road, that led young Macedon to conquer

Ganges, erecting along its way altars where the fair Mind

In the luminous form of the Hellenic Athena, was venerated;

That clear road of the industrious scions of Rouben saw

The squeaking wagons make their way from East to West,

Loaded by them with the yield of unyielding Armenian quest,

The marble of fertile mountains, the vineyards’ flowing wine –

Oh, the fore-nourishment of nations that sang and sculpted!

Now, that perfect pulchritude of life belongs to the past;

Alas! The Infernal Race proved more ravaging than time,

More, much more devastating than the plague alone –

It enjoys always to sit on a lone stone among vast ruins,

Content with himself, gnawing on a snatched bone.

Listen, voices reach us from inside the city’s ramparts;

The Executioner Race also celebrates its bloodstained victory --

Its glorious, gleeful butchery of women and children!

Part of the poor metropolis, on which, now the moon moans,

Is already cemetery, while the other part stages festivities;

Lo, the Tajik sets alight his giant bonfires of good times,

Bemoaning skeletons burst into spectacular flames,

Around it, bare-armed mobs rotate in an elated dance;

The blood-adorned Kurdish maiden’s henna-stained fingers

Tap a drum, and the Muslim -- oh, stranger – for the first time,

Imbibes on wine, raising a goblet wishing long life to ashes!

Nearby, the half-singed whimper in the darkness;

But, behold! A wounded soul rises looming in the gloom,

Then, approaches the rabble slithering on his knees

And sniggering with derision, disgorges with ire

A blood-tinged sputum into the festive fire…

                                                Mournful winds lament and pass

Over the corpses and among ruins,

And with seeds of blood and cinders of fire

Rush to distant lands to help a blissful spring blossom.

Stranger, there, the winds on the sparkling sea

Filled the sails of your ship bursting full;  hurry,

Depart from this bitter Country to your peaceful shores,

For the doves are dead, and the canary was crushed.

When, in sheer terror, your ship flees tearing the waters,

In constant pursuit by dancing dolphins that rushed

To our verdant inlets in search of cadavers,

When bundled in your greatcoat, with a still terrified gaze

You land in the lap of your brethren in gold – do not forget

To inform them, how Cilicia was slaughtered to the lyrics

Of the treacherous hymn of Freedom’s crowning!

I know, those brothers of yours, with their obese ships,

Will desire to come… to the rescue… alas, nay…

                                                To mere remnants of demise.

They will want to come just to dig our bursting, virgin, mountains,

And to milk from our nursing mines the miraculous metal,

To melt the metal and cast their egos’ idols…

Stranger, depart hence!  Here, I also come down

From this height, and bundled in my mantle, withdrawn,

Once more, I go to wander among the city’s carrion.

I must bury the dead, and anoint the burnt offerings.

The head of a victim rests on the granite whimpering…

Near the fountain, a sister -- oh, God! – agonizes in silence…

I must dig tonight countless graves, and fashion shimmering

Shrouds ‘til dawn;  I have tombs to lay down, marble cenotaphs

To erect, and engrave my solemn songs on them.

Daniel Varoujan

Translated by Tatul Sonentz

Daniel Varoujan - PAGAN CHANT

In the marble palace of the enchanted Dream,

Where star-studded chandeliers blaze, raining light,

I am a potentate of Eastern opulence tonight,                

And I have a throne, treasures, and fair-haired women,

On my settee, covered with many a leopard skin,  

My head resting on my wrist, and dazed with delight,       

Reclining, I gaze at a voluptuous Circassian maiden

Dancing in front of me, on the pearl-laden rug.

From her fragrant hair and body surges in waves

An endless sea of ecstasy, where I love to
swim.                                                                               

I have donned my majestic white garments

Woven with the opalescent tears of a thousand stars,

I have wound around my head my snow-white diadem,

Burdensome as my glory, versatile as my brilliance,

In my hand, weighed down with diamond rings,

I nudge the large glittering amber of my worry beads,

My silk handkerchief and my gold-embroidered slippers

Have fallen slipshod off my feet on the saffron-hued rug,

While at my side is placed, glowing, gurgling,

The massive goblet of wine which, as if by magic,

Shimmers in front of me like newly shed blood.

But my pupils, thirsty of carnal colors and shapes,

Euphoric like those of a prophet in pious prayer,

Have submerged deep into the soaring maelstrom

Of the dark-eyed, amber-hued Circassian maiden,

Who dances on, and keeps dancing on for me…

Her movements are often languid, her figure, similar

To a reed in the wind, a melody of aroma and spume,           

She sometimes taps her feet with such fervor,

She becomes a fierce flame, sputtering in a storm.

Oh, she is the magus of the mold and motion of flesh,

She is able to pour from myriad glances and swaying

Body, a flood of feminine lures and lustful longing,

Surging unbridled in front of me, like frothing seas.

And she dances, she dances, ensnared in a vortex,

As her brow sparkles with drops of pearly sweat,

Her sorcerer’s regal figure, veiled by her long tresses,

Shimmers disturbed like a willow’s image in a lagoon.

She leans way backward and then back to forward,

Turning from supple rosebush into solid poplar,

And, a stunning leap seems to shatter like crystal

and pulverize the spine beneath her splendid waist,

Then, with a faint amendment of her dispersed body,   

 She swiftly rearranges a resurgent harmony.

The pearl-studded slippers that fashion her feet

Seem hardly to pat the patterns on the carpet

And her singular flamboyance spawns a mighty storm

That sometimes douses and sometimes sets off

Blue flashes from the gems hanging from her ears,

And festive fireworks from all the jewels she wears.

And she dances, she dances -- she dances in frenzy,

Ever compliant to the counsel of my depravity.

Impetuous, she discards overhead her gossamer veil,

Laying bare both her breasts and her swan neck,

As well as her blessed belly and her sealed navel,

As stand exposed her stout thighs and all covert parts --

All the mysteries of the flesh and its awkward forms

That the ultimate effort of the Creator has fashioned.

When with her own eyes she sees her crystal nudity,   

She feels shame of the lavish display of her charms

And she gives a mighty shake to her storm-tossed hair

The wind of which rushes to put out the flicker

Of the diamond torches and the ceiling lights of resin

Of that marble palace of the enchanted Dream.

Oh, magnificent nudity! Nymph of pubescent chastity,   

Missing like a mystery in the depths of darkness…

Then, I bound, parched with the thirst of my passions,

And let my hoary diadem fall and dissipate at my feet.

Groping my way in the darkness, I find the Circassian,

Guided by the throbbing breath of her sublime chest.

Then, seizing her sweat covered wrist, I set her

Upon my settee, covered with many a leopard skin.

Oh, that lovely, tender body, radiating with light, 

Spuming in my arms like milk and like blood!

Oh, those surging tresses, in which I sink and swim,

Always facing the danger of drowning in their waves!

Oh, the ardent heat of those mother-of-pearl arms

With which she encircles tight my neck, like a snake!

Finally, we become one in the embrace of an intense kiss,

As I suck, holding her crimson lips captive in my mouth,

And I drain her veins for hours, without haste,

Only then, it seems to me, I would have, at my pace,

Tasted the entire breadth of delights of pagan times --

The spices of India, and all the incense of Arabia.

                                                                                                      ……

Daniel Varoujan

Translated by Tatul Sonentz

Daniel Varoujan - SEAS OF WHEAT

Swaying in the wind –

fields of my wheat slowly stir

with a deep shudder of awakening.

Along the emerald waists of the hill,

         surge sweeping sees.

Swaying in the wind –

the fertile field flooding in a rage

threatens to drown the grazing lamb.

In the quaking bosom of the vale,

         surge sweeping sees.

Swaying in the wind –

the billowing robes of surfing wheat

are torn and mended in shiny glitter.

In foaming shade and bright light,

         surge sweeping sees.

Swaying in the wind –

under the husks, where rise the kernels,

the moon has poured its pitcher’ milk.

Thresher to village, and on to the mill,

surge sweeping seas.

Swaying in the wind –

the endless field floats in emeralds.

A lark sings perched on a swaying stalk,

while beneath it, crazed wheat fields

         surge sweeping seas,

         swaying in the wind.

Daniel Varoujan

Translated by Tatul Sonentz

Daniel Varoujan - THIS IS THAT HOUR

This is that hour when labour, lax on the threshing floor,

gasps under the sun.

Each reaper naps.

In a distant cave,

the confined cool breeze dies sobbing.

Squeezed within a net of fire, the heart of that hiatus

hardly hits a beat.

In irridescent silence,

what dreams, what sighs

arise from reeds cut down in early sunrise…

Forests sleep on the murky sides of the mountain

beneath silver-woven veils.

In the blue, a lonesome,

milky cloud proceeds

leaving shreds of soft wool at the summit of the rock.

The earth receives the light’s bloody spear

in its split heart.

There, a fountain sobs

sniveling near a tree,

 unwilling to expire near the flower it watered.

Water buffalos, free of their yokes, lie down in the swamp,

strings of silver saliva

hanging from their mouths.

The carts beyond, by the heap

of wheat sheaves, raising their huge snouts, stare at the void.

This is that hour, O, my soul, when lonesome as a cricket,

you must remain on the heights

of spotless serenity,

drunk with your own song,

as the sun with its light -- all alone with its own light.

Daniel Varoujan

Translated by Tatul Sonentz

Daniel Varoujan - RIPEN FIELD

My field is golden…

Just like flames,      

The wheat’s ablaze,

Yet never burns.

My field is golden…

The sky in flames,

The soil trodden

Beneath the stems.

My field is golden…

Sheaves in rows of four,

Clad in sunshine --                   

Four files of amber.

My field is golden…

Bee, wasp, hornets

Whiz through the awns

Like lightning bolts.

My field is golden…

Oft, a fleet canary

Soares, wind driven,

From the blond sea…

Lullaby, golden field,

Let me come harvest,

My full-grown field

With a silver scythe.

Daniel Varoujan

Translated by Tatul Sonentz

Daniel Varoujan - BLESSED ART THOU AMONGST WOMEN

Mary, when you sit on this bed

And I, on the rug, kneeling in front of you

Kiss the cerulean veins

Of those light-secreting hands of yours,

Mary, beneath my warm lips I sense

A being, that swig by swig, imbibes your blood in silence.

From that night, when you exposed your bosom,

Letting your hair flow in abandon

On that pillow, and in extreme ecstasy,

Sweat streamed down your temples,

And death took the virginity

In your womb and azure eyes --

From that night, honey flowed from the eyelashes

Of your lids -- you became docile,

Soft spoken -- you turned into that snow-white

Feathered dove, that nestled under the sun,

Dreams of the nest yet to be built…  

Now, I gaze upon the dulcet fade out

Of your face and, through your open blouse,

Your breasts, where your life and you split

And you become mother.

In each and every beat of your pulse

I feel the throb of my heart

And the budding of my heart’s flower,

Whose fragrance intoxicates both of us

And is the love of us both.

… Blessed art thou, Mary,

You, who give me your ribs with endless love

And strain your bones for another bone,

You who become the cleanest furrow

Among fertile furrows,

And the most magnificent pot

Of all lily pots,

May you remain blessed, forever.

You, who discreet– as a pure pearl in a shell –

Bear the Godlike Man deep in your womb,

May you be blessed, Mary…

Daniel Varoujan

Translated by Tatul Sonentz

Daniel Varoujan - HARVEST

Pull up your sleeves, sharpen the scythes – for today,

Two thousand men will be reaping wheat and barley.

It is sweet to sink in a sea of spikes, whose fuzzy awn

Blends with the dense dark hair of uncovered chests.

It is sweet to swim upstream in a torrent of sheaves,

To feel the bulging of veins in sun-soaked forearms.

Here are the scythes, as relentless as lightning bolts,

They dive in the wheat as silver, and surface as gold.

Row upon row, spikes fall, as poppies bleed in silence,

And the flaxen flank of the hills folds in vast tremors.

Surge after surge collapse under myriad undulations

Soaring as waves in the furrows, in a vast sea of gold.

And hill and dale swell, quivering on amidst stubble,

While ever so slowly, torrents dry out in the valley.

Some of the men, raising the pitcher to their mouths,

Backs to the sun, swig the water fetched by the brides.

Some crush a lone, bursting husk in their coarse fists

And, before chewing them, bless the full sum of grains.

And tillers in the fields, upsetting the noontime peace

Whet with shrill gusto the blunt crescent of the scythe.

And they mow on, reaping with wide arcs of the arm.

It is the bliss of summers, spreading from awn to awn.

Oh, what laments and demise from horizon to horizon!

Oh, what wailing fields of rye, what collapsing oceans!

And they reap on and on, until the shadows lengthen

And fade away in the distant borders of the landscape.

And then, on the silent road, one can see the long rows

Of the reapers headed towards the lanterns of their huts.

The scythes on their shoulders glitter in the moonlight,

Their perspiring chests cooling in the soothing breeze.

While a cricket, wide-awake in the stillness of the fields,

Fills with its songs the endless firmament full of stars.

  

Daniel Varoujan

Translated by Tatul Sonentz