Shmavon Azatyan: OLD VOICES

As the last fragments of the Second Republic
were torn down and weathered away,
we were searching for a new homeland.
We spoke of great gains,
but gained losses that became
mischievously central
to the life in the Third Republic.


The men of the 90s swept the past away
in a handful of years,
but its foundations lay deep
and immovable as a bunker,
which could never be destroyed
because of its strength that came from
excelling for our state, our school, our group…
The new rhetoric to be the best, first, greatest,
to get the best job, to make as much money
and to achieve as many lovers as possible
collided against the iron walls of
the Soviet Republic and crashed down.


Now the ghosts of the old era wander
across the country, and the voices of a lost,
thriving culture groan regrets for the old
state of affairs that vanished,
disgraced and rotten,
and was forcibly replaced by a fragile network
of colossal individuals
and their rambling ideologies.
Yet the old has been living in our memories,
like an ember that resists dying
by burning away in the power-saving mode.