"Then to the rolling Heav'n itself I cried
Asking, 'What Lamp had Destiny to guide
Her little children stumbling in the dark?'
And - 'A blind understanding!' Heav'n replied."
Omar Khayyam, Rubayat XXXIII
In the darker rooms of truth and sorrow
I heard an old song, a murmur of woe,
"Is that you, is it, my dear grandmother?"
I asked that sweet voice,"why have you come here?
Am I still a child, stumbling in the dark
Alone like a tree in a treeless park?
Have you really come to soothe my tired mind
To give me your warm hug with arms so kind?
O that little song that you sang for me
Could I just one time, just one more time hear?
The song stronger than the sounds of fury
And the blood that runs in heart's artery
And the suppressed roars of the stormy shores
Or the ruthless rage of deafening wars...
Where are Armenia's heroes of old times
When will our churches ring their bells and chimes
In all of our lands, in all of our towns
From Cilicia to Ani and Erzroum?
On the horizons of darkness and fear
When will our warriors begin to appear?
Is that the same song, my dear grandmother
That you sang marching on the burning sand
Into the desert of famine and death
To resist, endure until your last breath
So that I may now be alive and tell
To the whole world your suffering in hell
How you were forced out by the savage hordes
Of your ancient home, land of ancestors
And how they tortured and raped your loved ones
And wounded then killed all three of your sons...?
Is that the same song, is that the same song
That you sang often in that journey long
That you had learned from that hopeless mother
Who for six days with no food or water
Was left with two things, her song and her soul
To give to her two and her six year old
Who died in her arms and left her alone
With their frozen smile and their painful moan...?
Then she begged the guards for only one thing
For a little time to stay there and sing
And to bury them, say the last farewell
On her knees she begged, on her knees she fell
Even then they stabbed for third time her heart
They did not allow her even that...
O sweet grandmother, my sweet grandmother,
Is that the same song that my dear father
Was heard singing just before his final breath
Is that the same song, the last song of death?"
* From RED NEWS FROM MY FRIEND *
Translated from Armenian by Shant Norashkharian
And as her tears drowned in her blue eyes,
On a field of ash where Armenian life was still dying,
This is what the witness of our horror, the German woman narrated:
“This story which I tell you and which cannot be told,
I saw with my cruel human eyes,
From the window of my safe house which looked on hell,
Crushing my teeth from my terrible rage...
With my cruelly human eyes I saw .
It was in Garden city, which was turned to a pile of ashes.
The corpses were piled high to the top of the trees,
And from the waters, from the fountains, from the streams, from the roads,
The rebellious murmur of your blood...
Still speaks now its vengeance into my ears...
O, don’t be shocked when I tell you this story which cannot be told...
Let men understand the crime of man against man,
Under the sun of two days, on the road to the cemetery
The evil of man against man,
Let all the hearts of the world know...
That morning in death’s shadow was a Sunday,
The first and helpless Sunday which rose over the corpses,
When inside my room, from evening to dawn,
Bending over the agony of a girl slashed with a sword,
I was wetting her death with my tears...
Suddenly from afar a black, beastly mob
Brutally whipping the twenty brides who were with them,
Stood in a vineyard singing songs of debauchery.
Leaving the poor dying girl on her mattress,
I approached the balcony of my window which looked on hell...
In the vineyard the black mob became a forest.
A savage roared to the brides: “You must dance,
You must dance when our drum sounds.”
And the whips started wildly cracking on the bodies
Of the Armenian women who were missing death...
Twenty brides, hand in hand, started their round dance...
The tears flowed from their eyes like wounds,
Ah, how much I envied my wounded neighbor,
Because I heard, that with a peaceful moan,
Cursing the universe, the poor beautiful Armenian girl,
To her young dove spirit gave wings toward the stars...
In vain I moved my fists against the mob.
“You must dance”, roared the furious crowd,
“You must dance until your death, lustfully and lasciviously,
Our eyes are thirsty for your movements and your death...”
The twenty beautiful brides fell to the ground exhausted...
“Stand up”, they shrieked, waving their naked swords like snakes...
Then someone brought to the mob a barrel of oil...
O, human justice, let me spit at your forehead...!
They anointed the twenty brides hastily with that liquid...
“You must dance”, they roared, “here is a perfume for you which even
Arabia does not have...”
Then they ignited the naked bodies of the brides with a torch,
And the charcoaled corpses rolled from dance to death...
In my terror I closed the shutters of my window like a storm,
And approaching my lonely dead girl I asked:
“How can I dig my eyes out, how can I dig them out, tell me...?”
Copyright (c) 1996 by Shant Norashkharian
