Poems of Yeghishe Charent

I Love the Sun Sweet Taste of Armenia

 
I love the sun-backed taste of Armenian words,
the lilt of our ancient lutes in sweet laments,
our blood-red, fragrant roses bending
as in Nayirian dances, danced still by our girls.
 
 
I love the deep night sky, our lakes of light,
the winter winds that howl like dragons exhaling fire.
The meanest huts with blackened walls are dear to me;
each of the thousand year old city stones.
 
 
Wherever I go, I take our mournful music,
our steel forged letters turned to prayers.
However, sharp my wounds or drained of blood
or orphaned, my yearning heart turns there with love.
 
 
There is no brow, no mind, like Narek's, Koutchak's,
No mountain peak like Ararat's.
Search the world there is no crest so white, so holy.
So like an unreached road to glory, Masis mountain that I love.
 

Fatherland

 
Snow-wrapped mountains and blue lakes,
Skies like dreams of the soul,
Skies like children's eyes.
I was alone. You were with me.
When I heard the whispers of the lake,
And looked unceasingly into the distance,
There rose in me that old longing
For you, that dream, holy, star-filled, infinite.
In the clear evocative sunset
I called, called to the snow covered mountains;
Night fell, darkening the distance,
Mingling my soul with the starry dark.
 

Our Language

 
Our language is flexible and barbaric
masculine and rough. At the same
time keeps an inner light, a lighthouse
lit with an eternal flame.
 
 
Honorable, ingenious craftsmen
have carved its ancient stones
for centuries, so they shine
like crystal. Sometimes weather blown
 
 
mountain rock, always with its own
animus. Today, it is by design,
if we chip it, to stop rust
from settling on our minds.
 
 
Neither Narek's rustling parchment
nor Toumanian's bright Lori-grown
dialect can sheathe its modern spirit
-not even Derian's silken tone.
 
 
But wait. From the iron harvest
our new language will be honed
to hold the deep and homesick thoughts
that are ours, ours alone.
 

PARTING WORDS

 
I have put out so many fires in my eyes
And so many stars have I put out in my desperate soul.
Don't curse my life as you leave – it's just a memory now,
My life will pass and fade away, but my song will live on.
My life will pass and fade away like a fire in a swamp,
Inconsolable and dull, without hope, without aim.
In my songs no one recognizes me, you know,
As if it were another singing the blue longing of my soul.
Forever mute and estranged, I have wandered in silence.
No one, no one knows who I am, what my life is about.
All they know is in my life I have written a few songs,
As I know that you exist, as I know that you are loved.
I have sung to your soul, to your luminous smile,
To the sacred sadness of your eyes and your face.
My life abandoned in infinity, I have sung the profound love
And the longing of my arms that could never reach you.
Oh, sister, my foggy evening is coming closer,
How can I stop my longing soul from weeping?
How, how can I accept the drained cup of my fate,
So that my hands do not shake, so that my days forgive me?
And what if suddenly I start doubting myself,
And my sacred longing for you begins to feel like a lie?
Whatever happens, sister, don't curse, when we part,
The pitiable longing of my arms that could never reach you.
 

1917

GIRL LIKE A LAMPSHADE

 
Girl like a lampshade – with the Virgin Mary’s eyes,
Tubercular, transparent, a body in a dream,
Girl – blue, agate, milky, enchanting,
Girl like a lampshade …
What can I do, what can I do so that my soul doesn’t die,
So that my soul doesn’t burn out in your agate eyes?
What can I do to keep the rainbow tricolored,
To keep the depth of my soul from fading and burning?
Girl like a lampshade – with the Virgin Mary’s eyes,
Tubercular, transparent, a body in a dream,
Girl – blue, agate, milky, enchanting,
Girl like a lampshade …
 

1916-1917