Translation of Karen Antashyan poems made from the book “Antashat”, published in 2009 in Yerevan.
There is God Above
With the prayers of mom
we get my brother employed,
me quitting my job and taking a better one.
The prayers of mom
guard us from evil eye, evil thought,
evil talk, evil deed,
from bad girls with bad thoughts
(come on, mom!).
The prayers of mom
Help us not to catch “the new” viruses,
but if caught, not to suffer much,
and even if suffering a bit, become (a) Buddha.
With the prayers of mom,
instead of getting back home from work,
we return home
from unforgivable and inhumane distances.
The prayers of mom
interfere not to take us to the army,
but if taken, no war to be waged
and if waged, for the bullet to pass me by 15 cm.
(sorry, I hadn’t told you about this one, mom!).
The prayers of mom
help the oil of the blue planet not to finish
the asteroids, threatening to crash with the Earth,
to pass it by,
the hydrogen on the Sun to continue to become light
at least during the coming 45 years.
Why are you struck dumb by silence?
look out the window,
or switch on the latest news and see,
that the prayers of mom has reached There:
thus… “There is God above”.
By Anna Davtyan
Headache
My grandfather has left two fairy tales after him
(I remember the beginning of the one, and the end of the other)
and this damn headache.
It, surely, has some dark connections
with the position of the stars and other similar things.
It bursts out suddenly in the middle of the night:
he
takes me out of home on his back
mostly grabbing me by the legs,
and dragging me along,
hitting my head over the stones,
takes me out of the quarter, the city, the planet…
and keeps carrying, carrying, carrying.
Silently, patiently, hunchbacked,
without making a sound,
without greeting acquaintances,
without stopping for a smoke,
he takes me along askew paths
up the mountain roads,
down the mountain roads…
– Look, look, young one,
this is the well I’ve made,
this is the church I’ve daubed,
these are the houses I’ve built,
the cemeteries I’ve made…
– Grandpa, wait, grandpa,
I know, I remember, stop,
I have to go back alone,
it’s dark…
………………………………
I return with the morning
silent and mute….a thousand things to do…..sick of it all,
while he is calmly buried in his native village
so easily, as to make it impossible to live without envy.
By Anna Davtyan
Ea
While
unaware of everlasting
easily starting and hardly ending
fuss
between women and men
from a humble dawn sunflower
you dropped,
a dew
and passed under orange-peach trees
filling with yourself
or life-o-love-o-lightly
the ravines
dug and delved
by an ancestor of mine – Arek.
Flirting with stone vishaps
caressing their smooth ribs,
flirting,
selfless,
rippling,
you coiled…
And once,
all of a sudden
you got lost wavelike
somewhere in the Indian Ocean
faraway, fathomless, nameless.
And while for a quarter eternity
the yearning
still anonymous
was fermenting in the space,
In my shell I grew up five helices
in your depths
and you
didn’t survive, nor waited,
but sunburnt
passed to the god of sun,
twisted on the heavenly sheets with him
rolled with him recklessly
dipping in life
yet godless space and time
Ea!
you –
snow-white sailboat,
a girl, а dolphin, a mew,
a song presentiment never put to words
Ea –
a cloudlet
wet tenderness
marking the bounds of biosphere…
With girlish grace
fondling yourself
sluggishly
vaguely and sleepy
you slid, you froze
you cuddled, you hugged
you slumbered
on the top of the northern holy mountain
impossibly lots of years before my birth
an icy silver water-dust
Ea –
a snowlet!
I remember the dream of yours
that we named “water lily”
and then there were blue
sea-crows like me.
Afterwards
the time-wheel
of your solitude
and my homecoming
ran on
and on…
While my seeds were roamed the deserts
while my seeds were dancing with frivolous winds
losing their way in the dark underworld
they wouldn’t come back
or returned as mixed blood barbarians –
quietly
drop by drop
whispering
you gushed
down the holy mountain
to trace me
squeezing yourself into every crack and cleft
touching, sniffing, licking
the salted footprints of my existence in the world
my petroglyph-thoughts
and me still unfound
the tremble of your expectation
brought out of your forty nipple eyeglobes
the mellow elixir of love
Ea –
rain.
I heard you:
“Stay inside me just a little bit more,
just a little bit…”
I breathed you – the sea.
Ea.
On that day
the first prayer
of cavernicolous
sea worshippers
was born.
By Eva Martirosyan
B-flat minor
I do love
abandoned and tumble-down buildings,
where completely unimportant people inhabited;
pathetic separations,
last week of October,
in the central avenue idly risen
but duteously fruitful oaks,
poetry,
biology’s teachers,
red bean soup,
Smell of Marks’s “Capital” and
black-white past of grandpas with retro moustache,
those caught in the first robbery,
captious and end in itself quarrels of elder spouses,
cactuses,
template stories of prostitutes
in «till and after» format,
next two days of swallow’s return,
my veeery distant relatives,
first 500 of last 1000,
discussions on God’s existence and the end of the world,
inexperienced reviews of elderly maids
and their tragic pride,
cornel vodka,
the seriousness of women’s struggle
against unwanted hair-coverage,
catching people of
loosing consciousness on vanity
generally, catching on some “sinfulness”
and not betraying,
collected libraries just for fashion,
imagining
the world during matriarchy,
cherry lips, everything connected with cheery,
grandma’s garden of various greens,
images on rocks,
imaginary stories-
especially that I was born in 11th month,
and when I was 13 dug a 2 meters hole
in the hope of finding dinosaur’s skeleton,
diggings,
some type of women and several men,
bunches of keys, green apple,
Lake Van,
words «barurashor » and «hogetel »,
young mothers’
maturity rich in oxygen,
letter E,
and MOST OF ALL-
from 13th to 18th minutes of
finishing the poetry.
Springophobia
Love has long hair, it’s gentle,
closing my eyes and concentrating
even color of its eyes and the other will come to my mind…
Love my not change its dress for years
specially that light-blue-grayish
with small white flowers.
I always think of Love concealed from spring
For spring doesn’t make use of it
and every time listening to the “L’histoire d’un Amour”,
love hugs my back and bites my right ear.
Love… each three months…
spasm of heart muscle for 25 minutes.
No one dies of it.
And like in all love stories of the world
and like all loves of the world
who knows how many years ago the Love married
a rich Diasporan-Armenian
and left for this song far… far… far…
(Alikes are many in streets
God bless that she doesn’t exist).
By Vard Ghukasyan
