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