Leonardo Alishan: Communion

Bach?
No.
Give me mad Komitas.
Give me the compositions
he composed
in the last years of his life
in the last cells of his soul,
and wrote
on the desert sand.
No.
Bach's God
is a cathedral God,
mathematically too precise.
Give me my mad Komitas searching
for his handful of notes
amidst one million and five hundred thousand
dead.
Give me music made with bread
baked with blood.
Let the flawless Father
be Bach's,
let Bach's flawless music
be his Father's.
Give me that simple necklace
made with the teeth
of a mutilated God.
Yes. Give me
Komitas.


Copyright Leonardo Alishan.
From the volume Dancing Barefoot On Broken Glass, Ashod Press, New York, 1991. This poem has also appeared in RAFT, A Journal of Poetry and Criticism, Volume 4, 1990.