Photo by Samvel Sevada
Lord’s Prayer
Our common and secret
Our private and our strange
Our subsoil and our breeze
Our huge and our small
Our weighty and our frail.
Out merit and our skill
Our prose and our verse
Our aptitude and gift
Our exodus end exit
Our only outlet.
Our select and absolute
Our hope and our trust
Our close and our engaged
Our fade and pinky-faced
Our winter our spring
Our summer our fall
Our lovely and esteem
Our immortal our dead.
Cause of life and smell of life
Cause of dead and smell of dead
Our wonder our fame
Our numerous and unique
Our native and innate.
Our polite and our rude
Our restricted and controlled
Our cruel and fragile
Our careful and unkind
Our frosty our warm.
Our query and response
Our trouble and our faith
Our bread and our starve
Our loneliness and sole.
Our shell and our deep
Our dear and our remote
Our sword and our shield
Our star and superstar
Our legal and our banned
Our first and ultimate
Our pleasure and regret.
Our day and our night
Our sleep and our watch
You daily work and holiday
Our quarrel and consent.
You in us and out of us
Our beginning and our end.
POET AND CITIZEN
Those who had been once in here
Could witness I’ve been here as well,
That I’d been here and over there,
That I’m a dervish slow and frail.
A crazy nomad, foul and lazy,
Wandering always down and up,
Being ready every moment
Getting lost from very path.
***
We have deepened until bottom,
till the ground of this life,
but the outcome is uncertain
of all efforts we have done.
We are digging deep in abyss
of this baseless, endless mine,
still unknowing the very essence
of this life: both yours and mine.
ALL PEOPLE ARE EQUAL BUT SOME
OF THEM ARE MORE THAN EQUAL
I lived so long on this terrain
For unique reason just to say,
How much alike are all the people
Living in this Stratosphere:
All Balkan people, Serbs and Moslems,
Montenegrins and Croats,
Turks and Russians, Jews and Arabs,
People close and far apart.
Even people outside Europe,
Indigenous and Nomadic,
White and Negros, Red and Zebras,
Fighting kinfolk of Kashmir.
Celts and Normans, Czechs and Slovaks,
Franco-Galls and Normandy’s,
Indo-Germans, Nazi-Aryans,
Anglo-Saxons and Chinese.
People both sides of Atlantics,
Dwelling in this Stratosphere:
DOLLAR-prayers, EURO-peanuts,
Man and woman, lesb’s and gays.
I lived so long and come for saying,
And now I’m telling you aloud,
About the likelihood of people
Just over here and round-about.
But some are nasty over me,
They feel offended and upset,
About my theory on nations,
Dispersed on whole Stratosphere:
All are unique, Messiah-like,
Being made by God in Heaven,
People of this crazy planet,
Living-dying here and there.
Even people of my country,
Where I live and will be off,
Dreaming dreams of faith and justice,
Does not admit my shameless words.
Now I am still in full-swing doubt
If it did make some sense or not
To live so long for telling truth
And understand that you are wrong ? …
In eyes of Serbs and Balkan-moslems,
Montenegrins and Croats,
Turks and Russians, Jews and Arabs,
People close and far apart.
Even people outside Europe,
Indigenous and Nomadic,
White and Negros, Red and Zebras,
Fighting kinfolk of Kashmir.
Celts and Normans, Czechs and Slovaks,
Franco-Galls and Normandy’s,
Indo-Germans, Nazi-Aryans,
Anglo-Saxons and Chinese.
People both sides of Atlantics,
Dwelling in this Stratosphere:
DOLLAR-prayers, EURO-peanuts,
Man and woman, lesbs and gays.
Translated by Ashot Alexanian
