I HAVE ACCEPTED!

         By Shant Norashkharian

I have accepted my degradation

As I caught my breath with every step down

Until I embraced my diminished size

Like an invalid blown by a land mine!

If my destiny was to be engraved

With a chisel which resisted my hands

How can I ignore the music within

My symphony of hundred thousand genes?

Hundred thousand blows by unknown sculptors

Some with evil or incompetent hands

Turned me to a rock which carries my name

Yet which even I fail to recognize!

Who dares to ask where the other one lies

The one who should have but did not become?

A question captive to its own horror

Like the dreams of kings under sun-baked stones!

I have accepted the perfect silence

In the icy caves of my solitude

Where I learned to hear whispers of angels

And heal with the light of pure white crystals!

Show me the way to my reservation!

I choose extinction over oppression

By a nation whose fathers still make crimes

With the dollars which bear their own faces!

Show me the way to remnants of my tribe

Who scattered like flocks of frightened geese

And refused to sell their blood for machines

Which chiseled us down to pieces of rocks!

        

         November 1999

Ontario, California

         The Poetry Of Shant Norashkharian

From 1988  To 2010

Poems of 1999

Which Ethnic Cleansing? Which Evil Empire?

           By Shant Norashkharian

Let us count them now without media lies!

1945 in South Korea,

Greece ’47,

And in Palestine, 1948 and until today,

Iran ’53,

1954 in Guatemala, 1963 in Guatemala,

Zaire in ’60,

The Dominican Republic as well, 1963, 1965,

Also in Brazil, 1964,

Vietnam of course, 1965-74,

And Indonesia, 1965,

And in Bolivia, 1971-78,

And in Uganda, 1971-79,

And in Equador, 1972-76,

And The Philippines, 1972,

Also Cambodia, 1972,

And still in Chile, 1973,

Cyprus ’74,

In Argentina, 1976,

In Nicaragua, 1979 and 1990,

And 1980 in El Salvador,

And in Lebanon, 1982,

And in Grenada, 1983,

Turkey ’84 and until today,

And in Panama, 1989,

Of course in Iraq, 1980-1992,

Even in Haiti, 1991,

And in Algeria, 1992 and until today,

And in Somalia, 1993,

And of course many, and still many more,

Each terror regime financed to murder its own civilians by the USA,

Every cannibal trained to cleanse his own by the USA,

Every civil war, every invasion, each dictatorship,

Supported and armed by the fifty stars,

Which democracy and which human rights?

Which ethnic cleansing? Which evil empire?

                                            November 1999

Ontario, California

I dedicate this page to the great Arvo Part, who gave me much strength when I was in great need. May the Lord God bless him forever.

"And then God's voice called out to me:

'Arise, O Prophet, watch and hark,

Fulfill all my commands:

Go forth now over land and sea,

And with your word ignite men's hearts.' "

A.S. Pushkin

"Talent is a heavy responsibility...you need skill to bear it."

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

1998 Interview

  

  "I could compare my music to white   light    which  contains all colours. Only a prism can  divide the colours and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener."

"Silence is the pause in me when I am near to God."

"The human voice is the most perfect instrument of  all." 

Arvo Part

"Come here and give me a hand, my boy! Once upon a time, long ago, an old monk lived in an orthodox monastery. His name was Pamve. And once he planted a barren tree on a mountainside just like this. Then he told his young pupil, a monk named Joann Kolov, that he should water the tree each day until it came to life. Put a few stones there, will you? Anyway, early every morning Joann filled a dipper with water and went out. He climbed up the mountains and watered the withered tree and in the evening when darkness had fallen he returned to the monastery. He did this for three years. And one fine day, he climbed up the mountain and saw that the whole tree was covered with blossoms. Say what you will, but a method, a system, has its virtues.

You know, sometimes I say to myself, if every single day, at exactly the same stroke of the clock, one were to perform the same single act, like a ritual, unchanging, systematic, every day at the same time, the world would be changed. Yes, something would change. It would have to!"

Arvo Part tells the story from Andrej Tarkovsky's film The                                         Sacrifice, which was made between 1985 and 1986.

"...Andrei Tarkovsky was a spiritual filmmaker and Arvo Part is a spiritual composer. Their work is personal and unaffected by fashion. It seeks to engage viewers on a profound, timeless plane that is attainable by only those artists who have grappled with some of the key questions of existence..."

The Chicago Tribune, August 14, 1997