Live from Holy Cross: Catherine Fletcher reading poems by Indra

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Catherine Fletcher- photo by Khatchik Turabian

Indra (pen name of Diran Chrakian (1875-1921) 

HOME, AFTER A LONG ABSENCE

In my room, near the cypress grove

the dark is crowded up, pushed into the light,

while shadows creep up on my walls

and untranslatable murmurs rise,

I see another, earlier place

where the father of a lost boy calls,

and where the boy chooses to hide

to worship his enthusiasms alone.

Home.  And once more I wear

the evergreen shadows that are infused

with incense like an exultation shared.

The heart of giants still holds a secret animus

whose truth I do not grasp,

although I am its heir.

MISTLETOE—a plant known for its medicinal value

Here in this grove of giant cypress

where the trees lean forward to press

the last drop of turquoise from the sky,

as they stand on the hill

I enter like a reaper of mistletoe

who cuts with a golden scythe

berries and vines he believes

will cure every human ill.

Like him I linger in the breath

of the sweet forest

on the edge of night

looking for an antidote, a faith

in the darkness of cypress, looking

for a harvest of undying light.

Both poems translated by Diana Der-Hovanessian

Live from Holy Cross: Ralph Nazareth reading Vahan Tekeyan and Siamanto

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Ralph Nazareth - photo by Khatchik Turabian

Vahan Takeyan: The Country of Dust

Small. Miniaturized, yet you insist

on shaking your canyons and cliffs with huge

spasms as if you were the centre of the earth

and the magnet that draws out and fills every sea.

So small. A corner. Not even a corner.

Scattered points, dispersed and dispersing lines

of fallen walls, walls you imagine the palace

you once raised from this mantle of dust.

How can you dream of old architecture

today when every edifice caves in

to make way for new shapes?

Any shock can erase you forever and no eye

will even blink. Yours alone the concern. But hope

rises like the sun. Accumulate. Dust consolidates into stone.

Translated from the Armenian by Diana Der Hovanessian and Marzbed Margossian.

Grief by Siamanto

You, stranger soul mate
Who leaves behind the road of joy,
listen to me.
I know your innocent feet are still wet with blood. Foreign hands have come and yanked out
the sublime rose of freedom
which finally bloomed from the pains of your race.

Let its divine scent intoxicate everyone,
Let everyone—those far away, your neighbor, the ungrateful, come and burn incense
before the goddess of Justice
that you carved from the stone with your hammer.
Proud sowers, let others reap with your scythes
the wheat that ripens in the gold earth you ploughed. Because if you are chased down by raw Evil,
don't forget that you are
to bring forth the fruitful Good.

Walk down the avenues of merriment
and don’t let the happy ones see in your eyes
that image of corpse and ash.
Spare the passerby, whether a good man or a criminal, because Armenian pain
rises up in the eye’s visage.
As you walk through the crossroad of merriment
don’t let a speck of gladness or a tear
stain grief’s majesty.
Because for the vanquished, tears are cowardly
and for the victors, the smile is frivolous, a wrinkle.

Armenian woman, with veils darkening you like death.

You, young man with native anguish running down your face,

walk down roads without rage of hate and exclaim: what a bright day,

what a sarcastic grave digger...
What a mob, what dances, what joy
and what feasts everywhere...
our red shrouds are victory flags.
the bones of your pure brothers are flutes... with them others are making strange music. 

But don’t shudder, unknown sister
or brother of fate.
As you study the stars,
take heart, go on.
The law of life stays the same
human beings can’t understand each other.

And this evening before the sunset
all of you will go back to your houses, whether they are mud or marble,
and calmly close the treacherous 

Shutters of your windows.
shut them from the wicked 

Capital, shut them to the face of humanity,
and to the face of your God...,
Even the lamp on your table
will be extinguished

by your soul’s one clear whispers.

Translated from the Armenian by Peter Balakian and Nevart Yaghlian

Live from Holy Cross: Aida Zilelian reading Daniel Varoujan

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Aida Zilelian-Silak - photo by Khatchik Turabian

In My Father’s Prison

I was a little boy when I visited you

In your dark cell in the prison;

Mother had taken ill. I was wandering

Between the prison and her bed.

They informed you of my visit.

You came to the iron-bar gate

That blocked our passionate embrace – what a crime –

You were silent and sad.

You were frail and so longing to see sunlight.

Your beard, as if grown on bone, concealed your face. Oh,

Father you were a dead man.

You smiled when you saw me,

But that kind smile was a fake;

Like a blossomed water lily wrongly placed

On a lake of tears.

From behind the dark iron bars,

You stretched your lips to kiss mine.

Alas, our lips could not come close to touch.

We were like a cradle and a coffin.

Oh, how I wished to embrace you warmly,

Grant you the free world outside the cell,

Flood your eyes with the boundless sky seen

Through my own small pupils.

And to empty into your heart my days spent under the sun.

I wanted to flood your cell with roses and spring

And bury my youth and my future in your cell.

Oh, what a sad hour indeed.

I told you bit-by-bit all of the sufferings of our home:

The passing of granny; the illness of mom with her cough

That bursts the silence of the nights.

I told you that owls are dancing under the moon

On our roof;

That our rose vine withered this year

From the dry winds of the cemetery.

You were listening with an inquiry of questions.

When suddenly a cruel command,

- A command so evil – came to separate us;

- You left without  kissing me.

Standing there, gazing at your departure,

I cried there. Lonely and alone, I cried, Dad.

- A new vengeance was born in my chest –

The tears in my eyes were the echoes of my heart.

Oh, love of life, honest labor, thorny hearts,

Saintly things all thrown into filth.

They are like collapsed veins

In the much needed paths of survival.

Along with you, drowned in genocides,

I saw, lilacs and saints of all religions,

And Christs who were spit upon.

Translated by Herand M. Markarian

Live from Holy Cross: Arthur Nersesian reading Krikor Zohrab's Magdalene

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Arthur Nersesian - photo by Khatchik Turabian

Magdalene

by Krikor Zohrab

A

The heavy make-up on her face could not quite hide the natural beauty of a girl barely seventeen years of age. The flamboyance of her careless attire—the gaudy blues and reds of her dresses, the black loose stockings that had to be constantly hitched up—was, it seems to me, her own simple-minded way of avenging herself by offending the sensibilities of ladies. When she gazed at you with those large and luminous eyes of hers you almost felt a velvety touch on your skin. The tresses of her abundant and artificially blond hair which were nearly always in disarray, tumbled down about her shoulders giving her head a slight backward slant as if by their weight.

She ushered me into her tiny apartment on the fourth floor of a tenement building and assuming the droll air of a barker drumming up customers, she showed me her bed—a big, wide, deep bed that occupied nearly half of the room—and the clean white sheets and pillowcases; after which she forced me down on it and laughing all the while like a street urchin, took hold of my head and said: “Won't you give us a kiss then?'”

She was an experienced girl and in her earnest efforts to dispel the timidity of a raw youth, she overwhelmed me with proofs of her affection. There was something inebriating in the aroma emanating from her body.

“I am the youngest tenant in the whole building," she said. "I'll be seventeen on Easter Day.”

B

She sat curled up beside me, making herself as small as a kitten, her head nestling against my chest. I had known her for only five minutes, yet she spoke as if we were old, intimate friends, wanted to know all about me, asked endless questions, but before I had a chance to answer any of them, she began telling me her own story—the usual sad story of her kind of unfortunate girl that may be summed up in a couple of sentences.

“My poor little mother died two years ago,” she began, investing that word ‘little’ with such tenderness that it pierced my heart. “I never got to know my father. I have a younger sister aged fifteen, and an even younger brother; also a grandmother. They are all I've got. My sister and brother go to school. I support them.”

She delivered the last phrase with evident pride, as if to say: I am the head of this family; I am responsible for them; they depend on me.

“Enough of this talk,” she suddenly burst out trying to dispel the gloom that her words may have created, and for an instant I felt the entire weight of her body on top of me, her lips pressing very hard against mine.

C

That was as far as things went that day however. She stubbornly refused to satisfy my youthful ardor. “Nothing doing,” she kept saying. “Today is Good Friday. What are you, an infidel?” It was indeed Good Friday. I must confess nonetheless that I was taken aback by her piety.

“Do you plan to take communion?” she wanted to know.

“I don’t know… I guess so," I mumbled. “And you?”

She gave me an astonished look as if I had asked an impertinent question.

“They don’t give communion to the likes of us!”

“Why don’t they?”

“Because we can't repent knowing that on the next day we will be committing the same sin. And if I don’t sin, who will look after my brother and sister, and my old grandmother?”

She seemed to be familiar with all the rules and regulations of the Church and spoke with the self-assurance of a priest and was even more unsparing on herself than a priest would be, I thought. I remember to have reflected then that if the Church’s regulations were applied consistently, businessmen, shopkeepers, journalists, and lawyers should not be allowed to take communion either because they too were compelled to sin every day by lying and deceiving for professional reasons.

“How old are you?” she said,

“Twenty.”

And as she went on hugging and kissing me, I kept raising all kinds of objections against the Church’s discriminatory practices. The Church was, after all, a human rather than a heavenly institution, I thought, and like all such institutions, it was bound to be riddled with all kinds of inconsistencies and injustices.

“I'm going to church now,” she said after giving me a last, dismissive kiss. “Come back after Easter. I’ll be waiting for you. We are still friends, aren’t we? Promise you won’t see another woman in the meantime.”

I promised—the promise of a twenty-year old.

After that we loved each other for about a year. She may have been unschooled and plebeian, her love may have been of the mercenary kind, but she was herself a thoroughly honest and decent person, which may explain why she enjoyed wide popularity among men of all ages, nationalities, and classes.

When I got to know her better, she would occasionally express embarrassment over her lack of education, but never her work. And all the while she took care of her little brother and sister from a distance and did so with such exemplary selflessness that I am sure it never occurred to her that she was sacrificing anything by selling her body to total strangers.

D

There was a mob at the entrance of her building and I recognized among them thieves, murderers, and similar riffraff jostling one another in their efforts to get in and satisfy their curiosity. A couple of policemen stepped out with pen and paper in their hands—probably having just registered the crime that had been committed earlier that day. When I asked the people nearest to me the reason behind this commotion, I was told: “They hit one of the girls in the building.”

My premonition, which never fails me in such moments, sent a cold current down my spine. Breaching the wall of humanity that stood between me and the entrance, I rushed up the staircase and into her tiny flat which was now jammed by tenants. I saw a doctor leaning over her bed. And there, lying in her bed, I saw her for the last time.

Contrary to her habit, she was now dressed in white—a white as pure and as dazzling as snow. Only on her left breast I noticed a red stain, like a rose in an immaculate field.

As soon as she caught sight of me she tried to smile. I heard the doctor stating that her condition was hopeless. She expressed a final plea to take communion, at which some people ran to the nearest church, but returned soon after saying the priest had refused to come. A little later she breathed her last and except for her little brother and sister, no one shed a single tear for her.

E

Years later, when I recounted this incident to a church dignitary, a theologian, he explained in some detail the doctrinal reasons why she had been refused the sacrament, pointing out the difference between adultery and promiscuity on the one hand, and prostitution on the other, adding that in the first instance the Church was prepared to make certain allowances, but in the second, it must take a more uncompromising stance.

Though I could not refute them, his explanations seemed to me specious as well as cruel and unconvincing.

And never, I shall never forget her lying there in that wide and deep bed of hers, with a red rose on her breast.

  

(1902)

Krikor Zohrab, “Magdalene,” in Ara Baliozian, trans. and ed., Zohrab: An Introduction, Cambridge, Mass.: National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, 1985, pp. 61-66.

Live from Holy Cross Church of Armenia - an audio series recorded on April 21, 2015

This week we launch a series of audio clips recorded live on April 21, 2015, at Holy Cross Church of Armenia, New York, NY. On that evening, we commemorated the lives of Armenian writers who were deported, killed or survived the Armenian Genocide, by reading a selection of their work.

Click here for the welcome note and invocation performed by David Bakamjian. 

Our heartfelt thanks to our readers; The Parish Council and the Board of Trustees, Holy Cross Church of Armenia, New York; Houshamadyan.org; The International Literature Festival Berlin (ilb), and, the Lepsiushaus Potsdam. Special thanks to Sig Rosen for the audio recording. 

Short biographies of the readers: 

Nancy Agabian is the author of Princess Freak and Me as her again:True Stories of an Armenian Daughter. Cellist David Bakamjian has a multifaceted career as a recitalist, chamber player, recording artist, orchestral musician, teacher & workshop director. Peter Bricklebank teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and the Hudson Valley Writers Workshop; he is published in literary magazines and book reviews. Catherine Fletcher is a poet and an editor for Rattapallax magazine who recently served as Director of Poetry Programs at City Lore. Alina Gregorian is the author of Flying Bark and the chapbooks Navigational Clouds and Flags for Adjectives. Pierre Joris is a Luxembourg-American poet, translator, essayist & anthologist; his latest book is Barzakh (Poems 2000-2012). Lola Koundakjian is a poet who curates the Armenian Poetry Project. Vasyl Makhno is a Ukrainian poet, essayist, and translator. Norman Manea is a Romanian writer, professor & writer in residence at Bard College, MacArthur & Guggenheim Fellow, translated in more than 20 languages. Marianela Medrano is a Dominican writer and psychotherapist living in Connecticut. Ralph Nazareth is Professor of English at Nassau Community College. Arthur Nersesian has published eleven books and runs a weekly writing workshop in the East Village that is open to all serious writers. Nicole Peyrafitte is a Pyrenean-born multidisciplinary artist whose videos, paintings, writings, singing & cooking are often integrated into multimedia stagings. Aaron Poochigian, a poet and translator, won the New England Poetry Club's Daniel Varoujan Prize in 2012. Alan Semerdjian is a writer, a musician, and an educator who lives in the East Village. Sweta Srivastava Vikram is a three times Pushcart Prize nominee, novelist, poet, essayist, and columnist. Sarah Van Arsdale's fourth book of fiction, In Case of Emergency, Break Glass, will be published in spring, 2016 by Queen's Ferry Press; she teaches at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts and NYU. George Wallace, author of 28 chapbooks of poetry, is writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace. Aida Zilelian is the writer of The Legacy of Lost Things, her debut novel which was awarded the 2014 Tololyan Literary Prize.

Short bios of the authors:  

Diran Chrakian, pen name Indra (1875 – 1921) poet, writer, painter and teacher escaped slaughter but died after deportation. Ardashes Haroutounian (1873 – 1915) poet, translator and literary critic. Komitas (1969 – 1935) an ordained priest, musicologist, composer, arranger, singer, and choirmaster studied in Berlin. Although he survived the Genocide, he suffered a mental breakdown and died in a psychiatric hospital in Paris. Shushanik Kurghinian (1876 – 1927) a socialist and feminist poet fled the tsarist regime returning to Soviet Armenia where she lived until her death. Donabed Lulejian (1875 – 1917) studied at Yale and Cornell and became a professor at Euphrates College. He survived the Genocide then died of typhus after saving hundreds of lives. Rouben Sevak (1885 – 1915) a Lausanne educated M.D. and poet. Atom Yarjanian, pen name Siamanto (1878 – 1915) a Sorbonne educated editor and poet. Daniel Varoujan (1884 – 1915) teacher and poet studied in Venice and Ghent. Nigoghos Sarafian (1905 – 1973) prolific author and publisher lived in Paris and wrote extensively about the post-Genocide Armenians. William Saroyan (1908 – 1981) Pulitzer prize winning dramatist and author whose family fled the Lake Van region.  Baruyr Sevak (1924 – 1971) prolific poet and literary critic killed in a car crash after criticizing the Soviet corruption in Armenian SSR. His poem The Unsilenceable Belfry was dedicated to Komitas and to the remembrance of the Armenian Genocide. Vahan Tekeyan (1878 -– 1945) writer and editor was travelling in Jerusalem thus escaped the deportation. Zabel Yessayan (1878 – 1943) studied literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne; she fled before her arrest in 1915 and died under mysterious circumstances in Siberia. Krikor Zohrab (1861 – 1915) lawyer and writer served as a member of the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies.