Photo by Dirk Skiba
ONE BED, TWO WARS
Here, our bodies crumble
in a foreign land,
beneath a rumbling sky
of a New Year’s Eve that belongs to others.
We share a single bed and two wars.
He fears that dying might last longer than living.
I reassure him: once you get used to it, it hurts no more.
In history textbooks, they call this “resilience”,
that is: a grand folk costume on a filthy body.
It reeks, but at least you’re not cold.
Aren’t you cold?
In another’s homeland,
under a New Year’s rumbling sky,
the streets overflow with minced meat.
In the sulfur-smelling air, a crowd thickens
voiceless and sexless.
I close the window.
We lie down in silence, in silence:
like a house where everyone’s gone
but the TV is on.
Translated by Tatev Chakhian
Migrant Point, 2024
RETROSPECTIVE
Our time lingered in peace.
Lost was found eventually,
life was a safe place to live in,
moreover, to fade away willingly.
God was recalled on good occasions,
in misfortune, we called him
to bear us in mind… and God did!
Our life was the postponement of war –
the luxury of morning laziness,
the serene ritual of coffee-making,
our loves left to be loved,
our books unfinished,
the same decorations on the Christmas tree
over and over,
our fathers ageing in the photos,
our ridiculous quarrels,
our superficial ruins;
every day a doomsday!
We used to die slowly in times of peace
keeping the right order;
from the aged to the young,
having a life-long time to moan
the gradual slowdown of our hearts
in well-equipped hospitals
designed for a dignified life.
Translated by Lucille Janinyan
Migrant Point, 2024
MIGRANT POINT
Europe —
to understand each other better,
I learned a couple of your languages,
but you never even tried
to pronounce my surname correctly.
At our first meeting,
I cheered loudly (like my people used to do),
then howled in pain (like muscle memory),
but you warned me that here, after 10 PM,
every sound counts as noise.
Europe —
you surprised me, as I surprised myself
by becoming paler and blonder than you,
by feeling at home, chanting at your protests
against those I never chose.
In the nights of your blue-eyed, blue-blooded men
with maroon passports, I saw your dream,
but your dawns never belonged to me, Europe.
You made love to me but never asked for my hand.
Europe —
you expected tales from the Thousand and One Nights,
but nothing touched by wonder came to my mind
from a childhood full of shelling and screams of war.
All the children inside me have grown up…
All the soldiers inside me are tired…
All the wanderers inside me are lost…
I came to sit on your lap and be nothing-like,
to calm down for a while…
Europe —
my heart is heavier than these 56 kilos you see,
but if my heart is too much to bear,
then forsake my body too, let it drift away.
Translated by Tatev Chakhian
Migrant Point, 2024
2016
I had no passport that winter.
This means I existed neither for the tax authorities,
nor the police,
nor the local official bodies,
just like any other body, except for the one
whose heart I still lived in.
That winter his body was rushed to hospital with a heart attack.
That winter my name was inflected in a thousand unfamiliar ways –
Tatie, Tatyana, Tanya, Tinah…
I silently succumbed to it all,
like one who accepts the height and weight of a stranger
at the first meeting.
I hit the gym that winter not to lose the last connection with the one,
who articulates words through my mouth…
And when I asked my trainer, “Where do my lost kilos go?”
he begged me to spare a simple guy like him from tough questions
and joked to the best of his ability, “Aren’t you happy just to disappear?”
Translated by Tatev Chakhian
Migrant Point, 2024
MOTHERLAND: NO-SEA
In a muddy lake surrounded by mountains
I live with some two, three million familiar fish.
Old men who heard of the sea are long dead.
Rocks are motionless; we have adjusted.
We are bored in the morning, we are bored in the afternoon,
until a guest comes and drops a stone.
Excitement leaves us breathless,
we slap about,
we spring up and fall down grasping the air,
we start dancing, braided, twisted, bonded, spiral, cylindrical, oval.
And we are bored in the evening, we are bored at night…
A day comes, we wait for a guest.
unIDentical, 2016
Translated by Tatev Chakhian
