* Copyright 1998 by Shant Norashkharian *
Shall We?
By S. Norashkharian
Shall we forget all the laughs
And all the times we rolled like children in the grass
And all the questions that we cared not to ask
Shall we now thirst for a lemonade we shared
And hunger for the nights when we lost each other
In a steam of lust covering our window panes
And shall we hold all the memories of our past
Firmly in our palms like shattered glass?
And when we embraced each other in a nucleus of love
With such force that could not be destroyed by a fission or blast
When we reduced ourselves to a photon riding on a ray of sun
Moving without mass to our eternal rendezvous with God
Did we not promise to nourish our newborn fire
With passion tempered with the patience of a nun
And did we not promise to smother it with our bare hands
Before witnessing its final gasp in a thickening frost?
Yet this same ship on which we feel trapped today
How many oceans did we cross with it standing side by side
And how many times we groped for each other in the dark
When the ice of solitude came upon its deck to embark?
We had nowhere to go, we had nowhere to go,
The earth had erased the traces of our lives
As the ruthless wheels of its evolution
Had rushed to leave its weaker souls behind.
And yet another beginning which had exploded with sparks
Like an unfinished symphony now searches its end
Waiting for its final chord to announce our last farewell
Ah, if I could pass one more hard earned breath
Through the fossilized muscles around my purple neck
The red tie that you gave me now bleeds like an open vein
And leads me drop by drop to the places where it all began
The places where we thought we could be together again...
I unfold every tissue of my brain again and again
I stretch it like a lunar surface covered with meteor holes
To uncover the thread which ties the beginning to the end
I try to account for everything that my seasons took away
Yet I still remain puzzled with my white nakedness
Like an autumn tree which against its will was undressed
Clinging leaf by leaf to its unrecognized dignity
I now remain puzzled like a disgraced autumn tree...
You told me every poet is doomed to helplessness and despair
Because he must pay wages to work instead of receiving them
And the wages rise higher every time he writes a better poem
So I plucked my body of every predator bone by predator bone
So I dismembered myself to have new members grown
So I changed from an adult to an adolescent and then a toddler
And if I do survive finding my way back into my womb
This time I shall choose the mother who will bear my ovum...
This time I shall choose the minute and place of my birth
This time I shall choose my world out of countless worlds
Do you remember when I was still a nine to five serf
Never again shall I sell out my most cherished fruits
For a paycheck or a title or an eighty percent dental plan
Never again shall I bend my back like a Japanese worker bee
To greet the masters who forced my future into a contract
This time I and only I shall validate my right to be free...
Look! How cheerful are the yellow daisies we planted last year!
They were just washed with the white saintly raindrops
Which had left their Hawaiian birthplace to seek heaven
Look! How tenderly they shared their new blessings with us
Shall we dance with them as they seduce the Westerly winds
Shall we make a new prayer to soothe our troubled hearts
Shall we, shall we, shall we fall upon our faces and cry:
“Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Deus, Kyrie, Kyrie, Kyrie Eleison”?
Ontario, California
February 1998
I Have The Night
By S. Norashkharian
I have the night, I have the night,
I fenced around my wilderness
I now disown everything else...
Only my friend, so loyally,
So certainly as the sunset
Will come again to embrace me...
I have unwrapped all of the gifts
That all my days have brought to me
Only the night, only the night,
Will wash my face with hope again...
I too have walked upon my knees
Like Catholic devout pilgrims
Chasing rumors of miracles
Or virgins who appeared in clouds
I too put my mind under siege
And flooded it with blinding lamps
And then unleashed ferociously
Its most dreaded ancient questions...
Only the night then came to claim
The urn of my cremated soul...
Only the night, only the night,
I now disown everything else
I now have the worthless patience
And apathy of old machines
Which rust slowly in cold junkyards
I now expose my nakedness
To everyone who’ll peek at me
With the contempt of the dancer
Who has stripteased for countless times
And changed her name with each new dance...
Go ahead now, try to rob me,
I will even give you my pen,
Go ahead now, use it to write
Everything the night said to me
And arm yourselves with it to fight
All the battles lost within me
Yet how can you rob me again
When you told me my legacy
Is not even worth a penny?
Only the night will be my heir...
Only the night, only the night
Will visit my fenced wilderness,
I shall recall all of my howls
My wolves will not wake you again
Deep in the night, deep in the night
My blue sailboat will carry me
Without a breeze yet pushed gently
With the warm breath of all my words
I have the night, I have the night
My blue sailboat will now take me...
February 1998
Ontario, California
Holy Mother
By S. Norashkharian
I saw your face when my daisies smiled at me
And came forward to receive your white presence...
Then your sweetness permeated my tissues
Like the sunshine of the shores of Lebanon...
And everything around me was awakened
Even the fresh green blades of grass affirmed you...
I shall capture your beauty now nerve by nerve
And let it drip from my veins into my soul...
You greeted me, so why should I weep again
If tomorrow did not return my greeting?
Stay with me now so that I may celebrate
The motherhood which yet I have never known...
Alas! I was just two when I walked away
From the woman they said had given me birth...
This winter mourned like it held back tears for years
Help me embrace the winters which are in me...
I bring you now all my songs which were unheard
And the roses which were given back to me...
Holy Mother, will you be there tomorrow
To return my greeting again so dearly?
Ontario, California
February 1998
The children who were born to us of love
When the jasmine changes its dress
The Landscape
By S. Norashkharian
Grabbed our last names and vanished in the crowd...
We had given them all our youthful years
Until poverty leaked from our ceilings...
Yet we still survived with the fittest apes
To stand and speak for our dying species...
But when we even lost our habitats
We mourned like mushrooms in slaughtered forests...
In captivity we had no language
And no address to find our way back home...
We had been displaced and immobilized
Like a toy train which missed one of its rails...
We had forgotten the light which was blocked
By the black curtains hung around our souls...
The morality of the immoral
Had crippled our wills and had humped our backs...
And their religions had chased our spirits
Which developed wings and then flew away...
O those faces which betray all the times
When they plugged their ears from words of wisdom...
How can we now pass beyond our darkness
Without stumbling on bones we recognized...?
How can we unlearn all the formulas
Which define the lines of our absurd lives...?
Where is the country which we had once known
Before it was wiped from all of the maps...?
Alas! The landscape which we saw in dreams
Had yet to be drawn by masters unborn...
Ontario, California
March 1998
It Is Spring...
By S. Norashkharian
From a dark green to purple red
To welcome a thousand white stars
Which will bring the perfume of gods...
And when the earth impregnated
By the flirting kiss of the sun
Feels the movement of the new life
So blissfully in its entrails...
And when the crow sits in the rain
On the branch of a naked tree
Just because it is the highest
And far above the birds of fields...
And when the tree with many hands
Stretched up for supplications
Joins in with a glorious chorus
Which vibrates the rustiest strings...
May you now cleanse as far as the eye can see...
Ontario, California
March 1998
* Copyright (c) 1998 By Shant Norashkharian *
Shant's Tripod Poetry Web Site
Shant's Globe Poetry Web Site
Shant's AOL Poetry Web Site
Shant's Translations From Armenian Poetry
Shant's Translations From Armenian Prose: Armenian Literature
More Works By Shant: HyeLight Presents Armenian Culture & History
For More On Armenian Culture:
Armenian Language & Literature & History
Armenian Hall of Fame
Shant Norashkharian was born on April 30,1953, in Beirut, Lebanon, where he graduated from the Armenian Evangelical College, began studying at the American University of Beirut, and earned his Electrical Engineering degree at California State University, Los Angeles, after immigrating to the United States in 1976. He also studied classical music composition in Beirut and Vienna. He is the author of several unpublished volumes, including two volumes of English poetry, one volume of Armenian poetry, two volumes of translations of Armenian poetry to English, and two volumes of translations of Armenian prose to English. He is also the author of many articles and essays published in local papers. Shant Norashkharian is also a composer of vocal compositions such as PSALM 86 for choir and organ which was performed in the Internatonal Chamber Music Festival in Armenia in the summer of 1997 and instrumental compositions such as the symphonic poems KACHEROU BAR, and GAROD which was premiered by the Las Vegas Civic Symphony Orchestra in 1992. He currently resides in Ontario, California, and can be reached at the email address Massissar@aol.com or Composclas@aol.com.
My first book BEYOND THE RED SEA printed by Morris Publishing in Kearney, Nebraska, will be available in September. It will be a collection of all my poems for the last ten years and will cost $12.95 plus $2.50 for postage and handling in USA, or a total of $15.45 ($19.45 for other countries). This will be a limited edition only and will make a great Christmas gift. If you reserve a copy now I will autograph it for you personally. I will be the only one selling it by mail. Those of you who have not reserved a copy yet please do so as soon as possible by emailing me at Composclas@aol.com or Massissar@aol.com or Composclas@theglobe.com or Composclas@bigfoot.com. Payment details will be sent to you next month.My mailing address is:
S. Norashkharian
669 E. Foothill Blvd. #118
Upland, CA 91786
USA
