Kosrof Chantikian: Grandmother Maria Marna

when your eyes had deciphered
the language of sleep

had become like the dark soil
of Lake Van
where you were born

you fled Asia Minor
to stay alive

it was then your hair
became like burnt water

hair of snow
hair of Eurasia
hair from the Antilles
baked by the sun

and your voice
like the silence
of a winter star
said only

what was I
and what have I become?

and when you died
the grass of the garden bowed
& branches from the sycamore snapped


Copyright Kosrof Chantikian. This poem appeared in Ararat, Summer 1993.