ON THE OTHER SIDE OF HORIZON
The words told by silence are deeper than
when you try to speak: the sadness, the flower
and the sky always whisper in my ear.
No one speaks while kissing:
no matter how far are the stars, they’re mine.
No one speaks while creating:
the mind is freedom.
No one speaks while shooting:
the torment is sincerity.
The dreams live in unachievable horizon,
and when I want to kiss your eyes – I just kiss
the horizon…and love blossoms on the other side of
silence, word and horizon.
THE ANGELS
When I hug you
I close my eyes for to see you better:
the light deceives.
My window was open at night and
all the garden flowers (except a little flower
which loves me) have broken into the house
with rain, moon and stars.
When I woke up
the angels were talking about the dawn joyously
on the blue wing of lilac.
It has been much easier for my forefather,
and the kiss, like the apple of immortality,
has been ripening only in the darkness of cave,
where there were only inside sky and stars.
I was following the passage by my glance: Cranes,
isn’t it early?
While kissing you I turn off the light, for it won’t
take the kisses.
The light steals the eyes from eyes.
Up to the brooks and rocks – the highest clouds come true,
because there are unknown violets in the gorges.
And the springtime cool is as pleasant as it seems that
the hems of your nightdress are slapping me.
My fingers slide over your violet body –
like they slowly pull the nighttime clouds,
and suddenly thousands of, millions of , milliards of stars
blossom in the universe…But who is the counter?
And love blossoms on the other side of
silence, word and horizon.
FLOWER OF SPIRIT
When Shamiram* walks, the flowers blossom
on her arms, hands, pelvises and … everywhere.
They say there’s a bird that quenches her thirst
by the drops of rain at lightning time. That bird
lives among the sufferers for love.
Permanent navigation of torment – this is the soul.
A flower out of greenhouse – this is the love.
– Alas!
– Why?
– Every day a flower gets faded.
– But the scent… the scent is permanent – this is the soul.
And the thorn of love is a flower of spirit,
and it’s a memory – this is the love.
I went deep into the night up to the door of obscure
and left a long stem flower on its handle
like a word, which will never be told…
And love blossoms on the other side of
silence, word and horizon.
——————————————————
* Shamiram – the wife of Ninos, the king of
Assyrians(Armenian Mythology)
A SONG WITH UNCERTAIN WORDS
A killing scene of beauty, where
the curtain will never go down…
The darkness is speechless like a
still wind, and we put the boundlessness under feet,
continually training ourselves by limits.
On the stones of every prison put
memorial plaques up,with a modest note-
telling how long has sat every poet and
in which prison, and put it in the
advertisement of prisons.
It’s as white as it’s not…
I haven’t born at my birthday (a song
with uncertain words), the darkness is always
pregnant and the light comes at the end.
A LEAF IN A GIRL’S PALM
Nothing hurts as much as the silence of
tree in November. Just stand by the tree,
put your hand on its branch, without any word
(because there’s dirt in every word)
and watch
how the green rejoicings go away
with the leaves, unwillingly,
how the leaves slowly envelope
the crazy suns,
how the whispers of sweethearts
decorate the paths of past with the leaves,
how the burning clouds
murmur thousands of secrets, with the falling leaves,
how the rains survey
old and less old memories, with the leaves,
how the drawn by tiptoe thunders
hold the grass, with the leaves,
and it is seen without eyes-
how the tree accepts the running girl
who stretches the leaf of her palm,
robbed from the winds…
The smile is sadness,
when it seems to you that the fallen leaves
will just become multicolored butterflies
in front of your feet, hitting your face,
then fly to the sky in flocks…
…When you decide to go,
put your hand on the branch of the tree again,
and if you will meet in the fog a steed coming to you
behind of it – a worn out bridle clanking on the stones,
please, don’t forget to bow…
ABSENT VOICES
My way (or I ) has seen more lightening
than the real light. My chain isn’t
built by rings, but by voices –
incompatible often and various,
let’s say stone, love, bird, cloud,
flower, blood, etc…
Who orders the night?
Even my old friends – the stars
whom I was talking among the naïve
nights of my love, seem to be undecipherable
signs in a strange land…The thorn is anti-rose
and, at the same time, sponsor of the smell.
During all my life I investigate the refusal.
The distance is armenian thing, surely,
it’s a national conception. In undiscovered planets
my blood corpuscles sometimes have a talk
with my compatriots –
loving one another, without concord.
And Paolo Coelho talks to me
in an out of words language.
The far gets mature in the steps. Words are
the apostles of light. By your untold word
I could reach further, than by simple steps
(I master this ways). Who’s that one, standing at our
rosehip plant? And the non-golden cock on his shoulder
“thinks ceaselessly, that the day is just rising”.
I (or my way) have seen more lightening
than the real light. That what I touch(stone,
plant, melody) jingles by my voice, inviting
my soul to the unoccupied valleys…I’m not
only me. Three birds were singing on the roadside
tree, though one of them wasn’t singing…
AFTER BABYLON
I’m just the phrase “ I love…”
that my Father has whispered to my Mother,
when she has been 16.
Lovely way
where the only exit is the birth of child…
In the murmurs of fountain
the grass, the sky and the mind syntax,
and the air fills by the smell of any
non-exceed rose,
with yellow and blue butterflies…
The trot of spring twangs in barefooted
valleys. Shiraz* has made the greatest toast
about Ararat and there aren’t any untold cheers at all.
The light has no stations. The separation is
something false, because the meeting is always
present. And there isn’t any higher mountain
but the mountains of childhood.
I built my nest on the branches of the second.
I had gone to bring a new shoot or straw,
and when I returned, the second had already
disappeared. There were only your eyes.
Two mountains are walking along the
endless way- like the scales of
the darkness and the light:
the sun rises from one’s back
and sets on the shoulder of another.
The brand newest in the world is the world itself.
But every second it is old and another…
I’m just the phrase “I love…”,
and the word “mess” has been delivered
after Babylon, indeed.
—————————————————————
* Hovhannes Shiraz – Armenian poet of 20th century
AGAIN ABOUT A SOLEMN OCCASION
OF SPROUTING
There is a flower, which grows on the windows of prisons only,
through which the dreamy eyes of the prisoners always look out.
The first return of the world has been sanctified by doves.
Time of cassation.
The day consists of minutes – rising in honour of.
Overpain turns the man into superman.
There’s a rose in the hand of every girl,
even if there isn’t,
just our eyes are suffering from weak – sightedness…
I wonder if the star succeeds to reach itself.
The singers of love get more and more, as there’s no love.
What the hell is in my brain? “ Excuse me, Yerevan,
there’s a smell of blood in your roses”…
The greatest heroic deed in universe is the sprouting.
Reaching is loosing, indeed.
And there isn’t a stupider question
but: “Where are you going?”
because all of us go to the same place, at least.
Sad air. A strange female shadow.
And Gustave Flaubert tells that there’s a
tree in some Babylonian address:
instead of fruits, human heads grow on its branches.
An ant goes up to the tree,
to the sky, maybe…
AIR
No matter where am I, I’m here at this moment.
In the furthest far. There are stars on the wings of sky.
My past walks ahead me and though always disturbs
being on the way, anyway, I keep on walking.
The ways have eternal fight against the vagrant walls.
A word can change the air of a whole country.
A fiction of presence, air, distance, time
and sad emptiness of sky at dawn
while the sun isn’t risen yet.
I like the universal love of suffering –
inside everything the light seeks for an exit
but it’s not always succeeded:
I notice this while looking at stones.
Every day we zealously walk out of lines but
none of us knows where do we go
and as we could know we would be frank finally
and none would make a step ever…
The fountain-love beats under the ices of immortality.
Opposing rivers.
Opposing winds.
Opposing heart.
It wasn’t me while I was leaving and , all the more,
it wasn’t me while I was coming.
But there really is something after me:
it’s a soothsayer moment when the wild herd of steeds,
lost in the golden dust of neighs, enters the city
and the children (who never have seen horses out
of Picasso’s paintings) goggle at them, astonished.
The doves bob up and down at sky
troubled by suppliant signals of cars.
No matter on what way – but the first passenger
is the Mind first, then we are.
Every person has got losses
otherwise he wouldn’t pick the flower up.
And all the reasons are false:
death comes suddenly only at that moment
when the air is finished.
Word – out of the word.
Unusual births, unusual corpses – usual life.
Number, dash, number. That’s the all, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Thirst without fountain in the midst of boundless time.
Scent of the flower could be various – scent of birth,
of love, of death, of eternity
but solidly it’s the same cherished flower.
Meet – whom you must meet.
As naïve as to love and unanswered as to be loved.
Meet the flower.
There are stars on the wings of sky. The fervent caresses
of eternal love ripen under the shroud of darkness
bunched in gorges.
From the furthest point of universe up to the place I stay
my heart flies like a ray of light.
I am eager to see that flower which will be blossomed
after I close my eyes…
No matter where am I, I’m here at this moment.
In the furthest far. Meet the flower.
ALL THE CEILINGS OF THE WORLD ARE
LOW FOR HANGING MYSELF
The river in its mind flows to the mountains
by the opposite direction, perhaps it pours into
the sea…My sadness helps me to get out of me
and instead he gets inside. And talks like that,
as he doesn’t just talk but tastes the words.
There’s nothing more difficult, but simplicity.
Inaccessibility of the reachable. The trees are born
all their attention to the way of sky, what to do if
no tree could get to the sky so far, but they still
are striving for that. One day they will, indeed…
Self-contentment is the monopoly of weak people.
Up to the sky – there’s no more sky, and all the ceilings
of the world are low for hanging myself.
The moment is the highest point of infinity:
the stem is a flower – shivering from
Translated into English by Tatev Khurshudyan
