Other poems will be added soon…
Scenes from a Forgotten Slaughter
April, 1915
I stumble through maiden cries in the night air,
they pierce the sweet jasmine, stunt the tall, ripe mint,
hover over stained walls, a bloodmist,
refusing to pass over.
They silence the last earthsongs of my brothers in the fields,
so long in my memory….
I hear you, chaste daughters in motherweave,
weeping for your lost lily dreams,
the innocence torn from your trembling thighs,
your fathers—pleading, then hacked,
falling….
Ending now the brief season
of apricot delights, wondrous unending tales,
the smiling voices of our Mothers,
our stern, soft, baritone Fathers….
Merely another slaughter?
Hardly….
Rachel’s cries cannot compare to Vartan’s severed families,
Bleeding in the desert air, mid jeers and cruel obscenities.
II
Our wan, wandering poets, who sang the primal gardens
of their homeland—
Where are they tonight? Made mere mulch?
A compost to feed a “new nation”?
Can any new land be born of so much hate, so much death?
Perhaps, if swaddled in lies, far beyond Bethlehem….
Smiling Hayrig, your tavloo board awaits you,
only stray pieces now on a stone table,
meager repast for weeping players,
a gift from lesser gods….
Dearest Hayrig, I see you still in your frayed, pin-striped suit,
unbuttoned shirt, your arak half finished….
I will ever recall your apple face,
your Latakia breath, the stomping peasant dance with your
laughing, raisin-eyed grandchildren….
Who could put a blade to such faces?
You, Reader?
Haughty beheaders,
we don’t begrudge your long love affair with Germany—
Even barbarism must have its brotherhoods….
For you, sweet Hayrigs, Mayrigs of the warm hands,
I will, in my sad folly, seek some Orpheus
to bargain with the brooding rulers of the Dead
and bring you back to us.…
Perhaps they will listen—
I will offer them Manna for Myth….
God, where were You? Musing in Eden?
And dearest Christ, high in your bright mansions,
could you not hear our nightlong cries here, below,
in the blood-muddied streets?
Have you forgotten? It was you who told us
“There is no hiding place down here….”
III
Mayrig, beloved of bards, I see you still,
smiling, singing to your newborn,
your fists deep in fragrant dough,
your floured wrist moving aside
hairstrands from your moist, narrow brow….
No, that barn noise is not your returning husband,
but his expedient murder,
that sudden flash of nitrate
ignites your years of work, cremates your speckled cow.
This night your beloved Kevork
will not sigh in sweet sleep beside you,
nor the next night—your last….
Is that laughter from the barn?
Not our laughter—not heartfelt and happy,
too cruel, too false.
On a high dead branch
three sickly crows
obscure the dripping pomegranate sun….
Wandering, an aged Der Hayr mumbles the
Der voghormia….
Stallion lads and April maidens,
dancing in the harvest air,
your songs alone will ease our pain,
and soothe our hatred into prayer….
IV
Sons and Daughters, will no one believe us?
We have wept for centuries,
cursed the wind for decades.
Will the wind relent and listen?
Not likely….
Beloved remnants, we have wandered the world as
fatherless prodigals, haunted always
by the cries of mothers and children
who disappeared like light rain
into the ruthless dunes beyond Dikranagehrt….
I have had this dream since a boy,
watching elderlies, their hands over their eyes,
hoping to make memory opaque,
smoking in silence,
sighing in their Turgenev sadness…..
V
Brothers, Sisters, songless for so long, cut down like
a grove of hearty birches—once fragrant, tall and strong,
reveling in the wind—
stunted now for so many seasons,
our foliage fearful, awaiting water….
It is time for some devout son and daughter (armed…),
to heal us,
to nourish our arid dreams, rouse our saddened hearts,
and then leave us
to grow strong, proud,
striding in the Light once again
the Holy Paths of Ararat,
Singing….
George Kirazian