William Zeytounlian: Armenia
Armenia
By William Zeytounlian
There is a dual dimension of history written from the testimonies of a survivor. It’s certainly a speech about the past. But first of all, it is a discourse about the present, or rather, a discourse about the project that the survivor has about the interlocutor. With a survivor, we enter the collective ditch of the past with our present-day clothing, like the apostles of a Renaissance painting in ancient Jerusalem or Dante in hell.
The alphabet on the shield
Unveils the grass,
The abridged sand
We – weak morrow
Muffled breath
Us – oblivion, memory
Of a breed
Ottoman moon
Shiny epidermis —
Reveals the seed,
The sober aria
Over sand:
Before we’re past
Breaths we were
Translated from Portuguese by Shushanik Hovakimyan
