Thursday, April 11, 2013

Tatul Sonentz: Letter to Hovsep



 
When beheaded
on your native soil
on a bright April day
by those with dark souls
whose brood still do worship
gray wolves on moonlit nights
you were a much younger man
than my sons–your own grandsons
whose blood was spilled that day
long before they were born…
 
That – we’re told – is our yesterday
that never was or ever happened
to be banished from memory 
and to be interred in haste
with your severed head
in the name of today
as the pack of gray wolves
howls a lewd dirge of sublime
rapture and joy at the final burial
of all recall of their forebear’s crime…
 
      * * *
 
Allow me to call you Hovsep
since I am your elder now
and in my mind you are
and will forever be
the young father
of my mother
loving husband
of my grandmother…
Hovsep--my faceless
headless silent forebear          
forever spouse and parent
yet a mute and blind memory
    …of a lost grandfather.
 
------------Tatul Sonentz
2007

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