Kosrof Chantikian participates in the MARIN POETRY CENTER SUMMER TRAVELING SHOW

Kosrof Chantikian: Fiesole

1.    Morning

The yellow roses

are hanging from the century’s

old iron gratings and wood beams

where dozens of birds – sitting and whistling

make their intelligible sounds

to one another   charting out their new day

From the pensione on the hill

you see the red tile roof of the Duomo.

Farther away the sky chokes from the gray scars of orphaned air

2.    Afternoon

I hear the woman’s heavy laughter

in the house below   bouncing as it echoes through the air

I imagine she is with her friend, her lover.

Her laughter becomes part of the landscape

that makes the countryside wild and alive

I hear the woman’s laughter again as the church bells toll nearby

two vastly different sounds   one from the body of the woman

the other symbolizing the body of Christ

I wondered if these two entirely different sounds could –

if they tasted each other – be transformed by love into one another?

3.   Night

How large is the chasm between your soft flesh and rough faith?

Between faith and the imagination?

Is experience everything?

Your laughter rushing forth uncontrollably

as if the rose’s fragrance were rising to the sky

trying to break down heaven’s gate

as if Circe were calling you home   calling you to her pleasures

The church bells sounding   the sound of His body

but the body only as idea   abstraction

Laughter would not chase away the sound of tolling bells

Laughter would grab onto that sound – swallow it wholly

But can the church bells accept

your body and your laughter?

Which would you choose?

I choose your laughter and your body together

The fleshy tissue of colors

of each of your hands

and your summer fingers undressing

the wild dreams of the night sky

An interview with Kosrof Chantikian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqzzVu6LBME

Kosrof Chantikian reading at the Marin Poetry Center & Library

On Tuesday, July 14, 2015, 6:30pm

Poets Claire J. Baker, Kosrof Chantikian, Peter Hensel 

and Cynthia Sims will read their poems. 

Laurel Feigenbaum will host the program

Corte Madera Library

707 Meadowsweet

Corte Madera, CA 94925

This free program is sponsored by the 

Corte Madera Library and the Marin Poetry Center

Kosrof Chantikian: To the Old Man in the Rhodes Cafe

I enter the small cafe in the early morning
rain falling lightly
huddled together a dozen Greek men

smoking their interminable
cigarettes drinking coffee and cognac
are talking loudly

old now from years of hard toil
I can see the wrinkles and holes in their faces
like cold sponges on the ocean floor

and yet these old men   I know their laughter
I know their laughter means
this is the beginning of another day

would you relive your life?
live it over to make sure your face had no holes or scars?
you say you would – if only you could have a face new

as smooth and soft as sand on the beach
but how would you do it?

in the early morning rain
these old men squeezed together between
five small round tables

sit with their legs crossed
and watch each other
smoke and talk and then laugh

how much is this laughter worth?  the old man next
to me orders a last coffee and cognac
he looks at me and waves asking me to join him

I cannot help feeling he has read my thoughts
I was thinking about his death
thinking that he would die soon

and how foolish some questions are
this old man is not going to relive his life
none of us will

in the end he had answered my question again
laughter was more than death
laughter was the beginning of each morning

of each night   was the sky and slow falling rain
I looked at the others and I saw countless cigarettes
and then laughter overwhelm the quiet sky


This poem appeared in the Marin Poetry Center's website with an audio recording. 

Kosrof Chantikian: Shadow of the Poem You Are

the life of the tree, the heart of the tree

the tree of silence where language is without words

because words are for us

and yet you speak in the tongue of silence

of the oak, as if to say to it and to the air

moving over your hands

I am the voice of your dream come to watch over you

I am the sun from whose strength you were born

you turn to me and taking my hand

lead me to that place where memory lives alone.

it is there where the sea begins

where mountains receive their names

where snow has never been.

it is in this place no star has ever seen

that I shall wait for your return.

it is here in these moments of stillness

where the word lives

where the unsayable may be said

that I shall come to you

shadow of the poem you are

Kosrof Chantikian

"Shadow of the Poem You Are" was published in Ararat (Summer 2005, No. 183). The editor wishes to thank Mr. Chantikian for sending it to APP. 

Kosrof Chantikian: On Death

Click here for the audio clip of the poem On Death read by Lola Koundakjian.


a few days ago
at dinner
you confessed your uncertainties

your fear
the doubts you still have
the feeling that erodes your face

that look you get when your eyes tremble
as if someone
has tried to murder the air

by stepping on it
by spitting at the sun
as if to put it out

you wonder if poets know anything
about dying
you would like to know

what it’s like
how to approach it
carefully you think

because you want this event
this transaction
(that you believe proves
the contingency of the world)

you want it to be like
a slow brushing of your teeth
something you are accustomed to doing

something you can finish with easily
like dinner

that will have a definitive end
so you can get up from the table
or leave the restaurant
something you can renounce
or nullify at will

something definable
under your control

like a poem
because you believe

poems are made like houses
where each word is not any more miraculous
than a brick or a piece of plywood

& that all it takes
is to put the stones & wood together

& is a poem
you wonder —
the building of it —
any different

or anyone’s life
any different than
stones or wood or glue

isn’t it,
what you call life,
a putting together of winters & spring

this is what you believe

you want death to be the same
you want to be able to spit at it
to compress it
to lock it inside your baggy pants

to crush it
with your heavy wallet

you think now
that death
ought to be asking

you for permission
making at least
an appointment to see you

on a Saturday morning
you will be ready
you will have all the arguments
typed memorized
ready to shout them if need be

you’ll begin with mountains
& then move on to literature

pretend to philosophize
as professors still do

demonstrate that death could not exist
because it is only the bad dreams we have

still it might be well
just in case
To see what poets know—

“what is death really like
have you any information for me?

a booklet perhaps
a sketch of what to expect
anything will do—

but I must have something
something that tells me
what to expect

you see—
I have an important appointment
soon

& I must be prepared
I must show
what I know”



This poem has previously appeared in the 2008 issue of Ginosko Literary Journal
www.GinoskoLiteraryJournal.com


Kosrof Chantikian is the author of two earlier works of poems – Prophecies &
Transformations and Imaginations & Self-Discoveries. He is editor of Octavio Paz:
Homage to the Poet, and The Other Shore: 100 Poems by Rafael Alberti. In 1979-80,
1980-81, and 1981-82 he was poet-in-residence at the San Francisco Public Library.
He edited KOSMOS: A Journal of Poetry from 1976-1983, and from 1980 to 2001, was
general editor of the KOSMOS Modern Poets in Translation Series. He has received
grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the
San Francisco Foundation. His poems and prose have appeared in Amerus, Ararat,
Arete, Bleb, Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, Green House, KOSMOS, and Margins.
He lives in Larkspur, CA with his family.

Kosrof Chantikian: Dream of a Conversation with Time

I have come alone
have nothing in my hands
to destroy you

only my eyes to see you
I want to learn
to know

how you exist
the old woman in the square
near the fountain

said you talk only
about the past & the future
that you believe the present

is an illusion, a dream we have
when our eyes fall asleep
she said the present died years ago —

that you had killed her
after an argument
I want to know if this is true

& then Time spoke:

sometime ago
What you call the past & the future
decided that the present
was no longer needed

not wanted by anyone
no longer of proper use
and so had to be abolished
disassembled annihilated forbidden
erased from our memory

I answered:

Time, how can you exist then
with only the past & future?
you would be incomplete

whatever happens to us
must happen in the world, not outside of it
therefore, an event such as death

must also happen
in some age, a century, say,
a year, a season, a month, a day, even a moment

how can we live or die except on a certain day
a particular hour?
how can I die except in the present?

the death of the present, then
is your illusion, Time
— you need the present

it is part of your existence
without it nothing
is possible

without it even you are dead
futile inadequate
you are the impostor

then Time spoke:
you believe I am made of three indivisible threads
but you have been misled

the present is a phantom thread
to attempt to touch it is to make it disappear

even to imagine it exists
is to prove it cannot

to speak it
is to cause it to vanish

the old woman was wrong
I did not kill the present

I killed only this phantom —
A false notion of myself

or rather — I abolished it
prohibited its existence

I, therefore, did not kill the present —
as you call it —
as much as the idea of it

the idea — which others insist on seeing
when there’s nothing actually there —

like looking at the sea
pretending to understand its motions

why it moves the way it does
why it exists

why the waves tear away from the sea
only to return to the sea
to itself

so you know now
that if others insist on

seeing or speaking of—
not what’s there

but of what they imagine is there —
what thej want to be there —
then I am not to blame

do you think
believing in something passionately

is reason enough
for it to exist in the world?

I shook my head
on hearing what Time had said

but before I could say anything more
I awoke from my dream.

in the late autumn afternoon of September
I looked at the trees outside my window

the sky was mostly a cool pastel
with thin patches
of clouds

a light wind moved the thin green
and brown clumps of needles
hanging from the pine

a squirrel ran across the branches of the oak
not to play
but looking for food

it was a good time
to be alive
as good a time as I could

remember
to be
alive

now

here
with you


This poem has previously appeared in the 2008 issue of Ginosko Literary Journal
www.GinoskoLiteraryJournal.com

Kosrof Chantikian: And When the Woman

And when the woman
very beautiful
came home
came home from the moon
from the stars
the lost holy places
what could I say?
O! your face of love
your hand wrapped in the wind
the tree of water began to cry
the crows were dressed
the rivers stopped to greet you
the sky came down to
meet the singing branches
the trees
where the birds sat talking
full of fire
full of hunger
& love
arrived
at home
here
with me

This poem has previously appeared in the 2008 issue of Ginosko Literary Journal
www.GinoskoLiteraryJournal.com


Et lorsqu’elle rentra
Très belle
Rentra chez moi
De la lune
Des lieux sacrés et secrets
Que pouvais-je dire ?
O –toi, ton visage passionné
Ta main repliée sous le vent -
L’arbre d’eau était en larmes
Les corbeaux étaient en deuil
Les rivières avaient cessé
De fêter ton arrivée
Le ciel pesait sur les branches
Qui chantaient
Les arbres où les oiseaux perchés
S’entretenaient
Etaient de feu
Et de passion
Et l’amour
Est de retour
Auprès de moi
Dans ma maison

French tranlation by Sylvie M. Miller

Kosrof Chantikian: Early Morning

in the early morning
a thick fog lays on top
of the tall redwoods and pine

the color of mist
before the dawn
a faint white light

and a little wind
moves the branches
of the trees

shaking off bits of needles
in the early morning
before any sound is heard

to lie next to you
against your eyes
and look through the window

the mist
something ancient

a beauty and the quiet
in the sky



Copyright Kosrof Chantikian.
Previously published in Ararat, Autumn 2002. Used here by kind permission.

Kosrof Chantikian: Home of the Poet

in the afternoon of a day
when a child speaks

& her voice paints sleep
with the alphabet of laughter

I come to where you are
to the sky's house

to a place where there are no bells to ring
or doors to shut

this is where poetry lives
where eyes are as good as words

where birds never sleep
where clumps of dust ignite themselves into stars

I enter your home
& see you

when I reach your hands
I know I can stay
as long as the sun will burn

Copyright Kosrof Chantikian. This poem appeared in Ararat, Winter 2005

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.

Kosrof Chantikian: What we don't know -- a conversation in the Scottish Highlands

Click to hear the audio clip What we don't know -- a conversation in the Scottish Highlands (Summer 2003), read by Lola Koundakjian.

This poem has appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Ararat Quarterly Magazine.

Kosrof Chantikian is the author of several books of poetry, which are available for purchase in the United States.
He is a poet in residence in San Francisco's Public Library and has edited an Homage to Octavio Paz.