Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace!
By Shant Norashkharian
*To My Yellow Puppy Sophia*
*This is my longest poem which consists of five parts and 125 stanzas*
“My friend! Miserable grass
You who suffer whenever you sneak a word
Everyone here has got his eye on you
And sees you for a thief
You have left your comrades and your children
The good Arab coffee
Your tumbledown hut
To suffer among hard-faced strangers
Who do not honor the guest
Who know nothing of you.
But in the desert
There are those
Who know your true worth
The lineage of your great forebears.”
Khalifa al-Wugayyan (b. 1941)
Kuwaiti Poet
*Translated by Lena Jayyusi and John Heath-Stubbs
Part 1.
I.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will free us from our endless orbits
And carry us to the green highlands
Where we can run again like the wild horses!
It will free us from all the little and big pains
Which drag us closer to the door we do not want to answer
When greedy neighbors come to check our things
And count the hours before they can invade them!
It will free us when the old father sleeps
And forgets to wash and heal us again
And deletes our prayers like junk email
And leaves us at the mercy of those without mercy!
It will free us from making bricks for those we despise
And bowing to icons which should not be on our walls
And from the wicked men who spread their lies
With the airwaves which follow us day and night!
O Gentleness so rare and so pure
Restore for us the faces we lost behind the dust
As in ancient paintings of great masters
Give us the living colors which the years took from us!
II.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will bring us the roses we loved but could not touch
From the fields where they have no price tags
Because no one who loves them can sell them!
Love is sweet and sweeter than life
Because it carries us when we cannot walk
Because it prepares us for the final promise
Of the waiting river which we cannot not cross!
Life is bitter and more bitter than love
When it brings us days which we never asked
And makes us remember our debts
Before we enjoy the goodness of the baking bread!
Who says any of them will recognize us
The wildflowers we planted in the far meadows
Who says they will greet us with their swinging heads
Or ignore us like all of our other children?
O Gentleness so rare and so pure
Who will accept us with open arms
After all those who walked away from us
While serving us the bitter brew of indifference?
III.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will give us the strength to resist the bullies
Who are packaged with polite and sweet words
And are groomed to become tyrants and presidents!
We have the protest of gunpowder in our lungs
Mixed with the oxygen of many brave dead men
Whose voices get louder by each passing year
Like the drop of blood which was not counted!
We lost our hope when we lost our innocence
After we came to the land which rejected us
And dwelt on freeways and big parking lots
Which cover the graves of the lost races!
We shouted in markets and from the rooftops
When they took away all our microphones
So the herds who followed their tails
Would not recognize those who devour them!
O Gentleness keep us from the mothers
Who nourish monsters with their poisoned milk
Let them bleed until there is no more to bleed
Until the land says no more please no more!
IV.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will stop the saw which cuts and forgets
Like the broken promises of sold leaders
Who made us abandon all hope!
Yet all those who lost their nests will recall them
And all the ancient tribes they displaced
And all those locked in prisons and graves
After they were pushed out of their courts!
And the uprooted shamans will recall them
When their ancient knowledge sinks in their pools of oil
And the grandmothers hunted by smart weapons
And whole nations they lifted up like sacrifice!
They will be recalled when they beg not to be recalled
Like idiots who sold their souls for six digits
And the scientists who gave their keyboards
To overgrown boys who played and murdered with them!
O Gentleness teach us like unpaid teachers
Who give us the true gift of understanding
And open for us the windows above the vineyards
So we can smell the goodness of sun-baked fruits!
V.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will expose those who disarmed us with lies
Because when we are misled and we trust
We obey them and lose our faith and honor!
They will be recalled when they beg not to be recalled
Like beheaded gods around ancient temples
And generals with red medals of evidence
Floating on red seas which they created!
Let them beg like the heads they covered with hoods
Let them be consumed like the money which bought them
And each time they hit their golf ball
Let it fall on a bone they had forgotten!
They have whitened teeth to match their black grins
They type bombing coordinates and then go to bed
They give interviews with the stench of patriotism
About murdering thousands who never harmed them!
O Gentleness do not let us recall them
Because then the red anger of centuries will rise
And descend upon us like the white ash of nuclear winters
Because then we must become like them!
Part 2.
"Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you."
VI.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will make these truths to be self-evident
That a nation founded by hypocrites
Will always be a nation of lies!
That all the leaders of empires
Whose hearts are of granite like their statues
Give orders which cut and forget
While the whole earth cries out under their paws!
So let them give us answers until mercy returns
And the land spits them out one by one
Let them face the refugees born of their refugees
And explain how their flag forced them into instant tents!
Let them face the remaining pieces of families
Which witnessed their mercenaries collecting rewards
After giving children chewing gum and toys
So they would tell them where their fathers were hiding!
O Gentleness penetrate us like the July sun
Inside the bones which survived another winter
And when the alcohol burns our throats to numb us
Give us a moment to reconcile with ourselves!
VII.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will pay back the earth all that we must owe
Because the glaciers now are starting to crack
And we are making holes in our atmosphere!
Shall we not name those who manufactured wars
To separate the people from their lands
And mine for diamonds in African playgrounds
Shall we not condemn the sellers of fake fear?
Shall we not despise those who consent with silence
And with apathy and intentional ignorance
And who look for their own comfort and safety
When the world suffers like monkeys in labs?
Shall we not kneel down and ask for forgiveness
From a million species which became helpless
When the greedy traded them for contracts
And left them on the forest floor without a requiem?
O Gentleness so rare and so pure
When will you give us the sweetness of life
Without its misery and its tyranny
And the religions which justify them?
VIII.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will shield the little peasants and their little farms
From the helicopters which spray their crops
And leave behind broken and deformed genes!
The little men with the big straw hats
Who stick labels on fruits they cannot buy
And get squeezed like them in airless buses
To earn pesos which bear the faces of their tyrants!
The little men with the gentle smiles
Which shine brighter than limousines
Who must even sell what they do not own
Even sacred things like their own daughters!
The little men who welcomed Columbus
And gave him feasts made for their lost sons
And gave him leashes like innocent dogs
To be dragged around and hunted for fun!
O Gentleness give us a moment to laugh
Like the little men under the banana hats
With the boundless joy of their colorful dances
And the sweetness which their land grows for others!
IX.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will help us stand and fall and stand again
Who are we to question the purpose of all things
Or why the comedy has lasted so long?
It will help us accept the seasons of all things
And honor the time they must begin and end
When it may be against our decisions or wishes
Like the falling leaves which fall like us when they must!
And if one season will not give way to the next
Then the time for healing and mercy must wait
Until all things pass under us and above us
As if we never existed to make a difference!
And if we must wait we must understand
That to understand we must first believe
And accept deep inside that all is good and just
Even if we have to sleep alone on ice like polar bears!
O Gentleness give us a moment at a time
Tell us a bedtime story at a time
Kiss us with the lips of a grandmother
Because loneliness hurts everywhere all the time!
X.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will make us show more mercy than water
And honor the little men who live within us
And survived the abuse of the centuries!
The little men are the parts of us who will not be silent
And the parts of us which are unrecognized
They will not be silent until we hear them
And if we do not hear them their silence will destroy us!
They are those in jails who say good morning
When they cannot see if the sun came up
Or when it went down without anyone touching them
Or kissing them through the thick glass!
And they are those who sleep in chicken cages
By the Cuban Sea and by their holy Qur’ans
The uncharged and the unconvicted convicts
Without attorneys or any end in sight!
O Gentleness give us shelter from all those
Who hijacked our earth and its governments
And made Israel their power center
To carry forward their evil designs!
Part 3.
“In Lidda, in Ramla, in the Galilee,
we shall remain
like a wall upon your chest
and in your throat
like a shard of glass,
a cactus thorn,
and in your eyes
a sandstorm.
We shall remain
a wall upon your chest,
clean dishes in your restaurants
serve drinks in your bars,
sweep the floors of your kitchens
to snatch a bite for our children
from your blue fangs.
Here we shall stay,
sing our songs,
take to the angry streets,
fill prisons with dignity.
In Lidda, in Ramla, in the Galilee,
we shall remain,
guard the shade of the fig
and olive trees,
ferment rebellion in our children
as yeast in the dough.”
Tawfiq Zayyad (1929-1994)
Palestinian Poet
* Translated by Sharif Elmusa and Charles Doria
XI.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will bring back those elected and replaced with dictators
Who received from their masters the names of the disappeared
Which were typed in English and wrapped in pesos!
Who will dismiss the emperors in training
And those who fell on their knees to give them pleasure
Like the Senate which became their Harem
After the righteous had fled to the hills?
Who will empty their hearts of arrogance
And make them weep until they cannot weep again
Like the women who still carry the coffins of their sons
Who were sacrificed to feed the war machine?
They could not defeat the Eastern man
Who wears the wet clothes of spits of centuries
They could not rule him even when they conquered
My brother I cry for you because your arms are bare!
O Gentleness give us the soup of the Arabs
So we can have peace and sleep under their roofs
Let it warm our insides and give us strength
So we can worship Allah and have faith like them!
XII.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will forgive the debt the West owes to the universe
Which cannot be paid by invading space
Or minting coins from stolen silver!
They lost the East so they lost the Sun
When they made Arabs crawl like lizards on their sidewalks
They burned the East when they burned its palms
The day will come when they shall beg for their dates!
The East is the Abused Child of the West
Which learned Science before The Right Thing
And bought Phds who worked like ants without souls
To expand the empire as they were ordered!
The West has big TV screens to hide its victims
It owns the wavelengths to justify its deeds
It has satellites to display how it worships itself
The West colonized itself before it colonized the world!
O Gentleness hold our hands on every step
Which brings us lower on the hill of degradation
For it takes more effort to keep going down
Than climbing higher and higher again!
XIII.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will raise us to meet the prophets
Who came from the East and went to sunset
To get buried in the ancient books!
The West smeared the Eastern dawn with F-18s
Even when Allah was singing from the minarets
And the hot rubble covered the city blocks
And the carpenters worked hard to build coffins!
The West calls them the sub-people before it destroys them
Because the Arabs welcome strangers and protect them
And share the food of nomads with those who hate them
My brother I cry because they corrupted you!
My brother I cry because of your mummies
Who continue to rule you even from their tombs
And to give you the orders of the white men
And steal the black gold which your children own!
O Gentleness give us the prayers we need
When they invade us under the cover of night
Let us become the carpenters of poems
And build pens which penetrate their tanks!
XIV.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will help us forgive you O Israel
Yet I shall Not Forgive and will Reject that Grace
For your sins cover the pyramids of Egypt!
I shall Never Forgive you Israel
Because your children who ran from the gas
Took away the air from their own cousins
Who must now breathe every other day!
How much more will you do O Israel
You cut down the olive trees where Jesus rested
You plundered first their hearts then their farms
How much more O Israel should you be cursed?
All the ones who saw you and went to sleep
All the white men you bought to vote for your crimes
How did you make them creep like thirsty lizards?
All of the world remembers what you have done O Israel!
O Gentleness bring us your witnesses
Who stood in Gaza in front of bulldozers
Which rolled over them and the crowded bedrooms
O Israel explain to us what cannot be explained!
XV.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will help us forgive you O Israel
But no one can forgive or should forgive
When he is not asked for forgiveness!
The girls of Bethlehem will stand up to speak like me
The olive trees will rise up and come to the Court
And all those who supported you even with a word
Will be paraded in shame for generations to come!
O Jerusalem you became the city of stolen homes
And your holy places are surrounded with giant walls
O Jerusalem how much more should we wait
When our voices are taken away before they reach you?
Who will chase away your money changers now
And open the way for holy men of God?
Who will destroy your roadblocks and fake borders
And build a house of justice from our little rocks?
O Gentleness give us a moment
To bathe from the red mire of Israel at the river
Which we shall cross once and cannot cross again
Give us a moment to carry our crosses forward!
Part 4.
“My country is handed over from one tyrant
to the next, a worse tyrant;
from one prison to another,
from one exile to another,
It is colonized by the observed
invader and the hidden one;
handed over by one beast to two
like an emaciated camel.
In the caverns of its death
my country neither dies
nor recovers, it digs
in the muted graves looking
for its pure origins
for its springtime promise
that slept behind its eyes
for the dream that will come
for the phantom that hid.
It moves from one overwhelming
night to a darker night.
My country grieves
in its own boundaries
and in other people’s land
and even on its own soil
suffers the alienation
of exile.”
Abd-Allah al-Baraduni (b. 1929)
Yemeni Poet
XVI.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will save us from the modern dinosaurs
Which devour and pillage and roam and ravage
To become extinct and make us extinct!
They hunt Afghan peasants with unmanned air drones
Because the cowards cannot fight on land
And after their meals they take photos with corpses
And celebrate and grimace and grin and glee!
They growl after gulping their gravy
And gather and gag with gluttony and glory
They garnish their gangs with glittering medals
To glow for the graves giggling to greet them!
Pity the five billion years which made the blue sphere
Pity the land defiled forever by their footprints
Pity the only place among stars which welcomed them
Pity the algae which gave birth to their ancestors!
O Gentleness give us a moment again
To find a ray of light where even candles are rare
Tell us how to abandon the species which looks like us
And the mirrors which make us look like them!
XVII.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will rewind our years to patch all the wounds
Which we caused like fools when we could not heal them
And to ask for forgiveness for inflicting them!
We reconciled with pain only when it became our tyrant
And now we must have it as an unwanted guest
Because it comes back to us every time we send it away
And stays with us like the destiny written on our foreheads!
We listened in the night to our wise ancestors
Who told us never to believe those who say they own the truth
For truth is like the breeze which cannot be owned
And will bring healing to everyone equally!
Let all the churches empty their content
Like vomit from food they should not have served
Let the wars they fomented upon the weakest ones
Come to hover on their roofs like vultures they bred!
O Gentleness give us the patience of the great men
Who left us the wealth which they never had
And who were honored after they turned to ash
And scattered away in the far forests!
XVII.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will lead us to the temple within us
Where we can be safe from the middle men of God
And talk to him with the innocence of a child!
There we can rise higher when he reaches for us
And greet the clouds as they open to embrace us
And touch the raindrops before they kiss the tiniest plants
On the hills which have more patience than mothers!
There we shall gather our most precious pieces
And discard all that is unclean and foreign to us
There we shall make ourselves so pristine
That the sky will look into our depths and envy us!
There we shall no longer be the madmen of many questions
Or the lovers who have no one to share their beds
Or the teachers whose knowledge is sealed and forgotten
Or the hermits who must find shelter on the peaks!
O Gentleness give us the seeds of Gentleness
Let them grow in our gardens after we return to our home
And help those rare ones who must cultivate them
After they nourish themselves on the food we stored for them!
IXX.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will make us full with the essence of women
Because man made laws to die of thirst
When there were milk fountains all around him!
Harsh is the wind of the white winter inside us
And harsher even the whiter bed
Which is silent like the corner guitar
Which has lost its will to sing!
So bring us the bandoneon man of Argentina
Let him make music from our poems
Bring us the tango man and ask us to dance
As if gravity was kidnapped just for this night!
Bring us the burning warmth of Piazolla
Who gave us the youth we lost searching for love
When lust was mixed with sweat and perfume
And time was ordered to stay outside!
O Gentleness pass the bandoneon around
So we can welcome the Latin and drink his joy
And keep the civilized men away from our tables
So passion can feast without their guilt and laws!
XX.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will cover us with the inner blankets to warm us
Like my yellow puppy who rests by my foot
And pushes away the growing chill inside!
She gazes beyond the horizon like the fisherman
Far into the dawn which is not yet born
She harvests wisdom from the yellow fields
Before they are planted and reaped!
She is like the ship which always waits for me
And never leaves the shores without my command
She sits by my fire and gives me more love
Than the family I thought I once had!
She taught me to speak even when it hurts
And all my brothers turned me the deaf ear
She told me to give away my weight to the robins
Which jump in my yard like little red blessings!
O Gentleness give us a world without flags
Where all nations dissolve to be one planet
And where the joy of my puppy greets
Every new life which must live in peace!
Part 5.
"We are few but they call us Armenian...
We don't put ourselves above anyone.
Simply we admit that only we have,
That we, only we, have Mount Ararat,
And it is right here on the high Sevan,
Where the sky makes its exact duplicate.
To put it simply David has fought here,
And simply Nareg was written right here.
Simply we know how to build from the rock a monastery,
To make fish from stone,
To make man from clay,
To learn to become a student
Of the Beautiful
And Kind,
The Noble
And Good..."
*Translated from Armenian by Shant Norashkharian *
“Do you not see that we pitched our tent in the banks of night
And called out to you to enter in safety
So that we could wash your face at night with sea water,
Your face where ancient terror dwells?”
Muhammad al-Ghuzzi (b. 1949)
XXI.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will help us recover from our terror
Of being crushed like baby turtles
For being on the crossroads of East and West!
Terror is more ancient than those who sell it
To make more markets for making more wars
We carry the terror of thousand nine-elevens
From empires invading us for centuries!
We carry the terror they made in Chile and Haiti
We carry the terror of Iraq and Palestine
And Timor and Congo and Sudan and Brazil
We carry much more than we can carry my friend!
We carry the terror of all the natives
Who were uprooted for oil and pasture
We carry the bondage of our Ararat
For which each of us weeps before going to bed!
O Gentleness help us gather all the ruins
Which our invaders left behind for us
Armenia moans and all the world moans
Waiting for the last empire to fall down!
XXII.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will save us from the deepest despair
Of knowing we are all alone in infinite space
And the universe may expand faster until it ends!
My puppy told me the Swahili man said
Let us bow down to what God had established:
“Rukuuni Hebu kile Mungu alitayarisha”
Which will remain after all words and deeds!
She told me a poet is like a granite statue
Which must be admired only from the far
And if he endures the test of time
He will shape many generations to come!
She told me the dying song of the swan begins at its birth
And so does the funeral march of the newborn
And all seeds know when to begin and when to end
And to grow with the goodness stored in their genes!
O Gentleness give us the fresh breeze of open minds
Which bathe in the sunshine of Truth and Understanding
She asked why do they carry all their fake bibles
If they can rejoice with a fugue and worship with Bach?
XXIII.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will wash the dust of dogmas from our eyes
And all the myths which were sneaked into our minds
When we still had the innocence of young goats!
It will wash the mud hardened in our ears
So we can hear again the music of the angels
And the murmur of the great men
Who were banished to the darkness of our age!
The Swahili man who spoke to my puppy said:
"Mmoja ambaye mimea mti mapenzi maji "
"One who plants the tree will water it"
So the tree should never have the fear of thirst!
He said:"Mungu kuumbeni na kuangalia baada yako"
"God created you and will look after you"
So let us my brothers sleep carefree among the trees
Which give us fruits from the water they received!
O Gentleness show us how to find wisdom
For we cannot buy it with toll-free phone numbers
Which their preachers flash on their TV shows
Give us the true wisdom which reveals itself!
XXIV.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will bring my sweet puppy a longer life
To let her play with me for many more seasons
Among the whitest roses where she was born!
So distant are her eyes when she looks at me
And sends me special messages from another world
Like the breeze which crosses the ocean
To fill my lungs with faith and urge me to go on!
She said do not touch those who crumble like old wood
Because they invited termites to live within them
And appointed their cousins to rule over us
From a White Mansion infested with them!
She asked me how we could close the abyss
Which man made between him and the earth
As fear never leaves with the bulldozers
Which destroyed the earliest genomes!
O Gentleness tell my yellow puppy it will all be fine
And how fear will soon run away from us
Let me comfort her like a good father
And restore her faith in the goodness of man!
XXV.
Only A Heavenly Gift Of Grace
Will bring us the strength we need to drink
From the well of loneliness which is so deep
That only the dead can converse with us!
She said you must go deeper in the well
Where your soul dwells and receives everything
Even if it is darker and colder than a dungeon
That is your only way back home!
She spoke to me again like the Swahili man
“Ulimi wangu umetiwa kulabu hauwezi kunena”
She understood him as she was pure like him
"My tongue has been unable to speak lies"!
O Gentleness how can I let my puppy bid me farewell
For she carried my weight when no one did
And gave me the serenity of far places
Where she will wait and call me when it is my time!
O Gentleness sweeter than my yellow puppy
Who heals me even when she sleeps
Who teaches me even when she is silent
Give me the music which she plays just for us!
Crescent City, California October, 2003 - March, 2005
