Announcing the winner of the 7th “Arthur Halvajian Memorial” Armenian Poetry Competition - Adult category
TWELVE VIEWS OF MT. ARARAT
I
From my exile
across the border,
I see Ararat
through the parting clouds
above Yerevan:
the blue sky splits –
window panes shatter –
shards
fly
across the horizon.
Rain, then sunlight
falls upon the piano
dappled
black & white keys:
dual cones –
arpeggio of mountains.
II
I fall asleep
in the laundromat
& dream of a hand
emerging
from the firmament,
kneading the mountains,
seeding the clouds;
whose whistling do I hear
as I awaken?
whose sins are being washed?
III
“My eyes are on fire,”
my grandmother always said.
(an Armenian idiom
that defies translation).
My eyes are on fire,
Ararat;
I have glimpsed
your flaming vulva
the magma of your crowning birth.
IV
I see Ararat
captured in Ani’s eyes:
she parts her crimson lips,
opens her mouth to sing –
light as air,
she slides from beneath me
and brushes her hair
front and back
in a mirror turned towards
the
sky
like cicadas trapped
far from mountain or tree
amid the sunken ruins
of an ancient
abandoned
city.
V
Ararat:
I
found you sleeping
inside
an ancient white shell –
at Easter time
my mother
would save one egg
for each year,
placing it in a bowl
in the curio cabinet
near the front door –
dried seed
of blood’s dawn.
VI
Ararat:
if I laid your body
flat on the earth,
your groin and head
would stretch across
the plains and rivers
stabbing Asia
like an archaic word:
caravan, oasis, tapestry,
spun silk sword.
VII
Ararat:
I see
your architecture
older than Athens
or Rome;
older than Babylon’s
towers and spires;
older than words
this tongue could form –
your cuneiform crown.
VIII
Ararat:
I
dream of you:
I am obsessed
w/ your stones, your snow
your volcanic voluptuousness.
I am possessed by your
nouns and verbs,
your personal pronouns.
I am in love with
your catechisms, your catalogues
your indescribable and infinite
solidity and structure.
IX
Ararat:
Will you press
your mouth to my ear?
will you press your ear
to my chest?
will you be silent
for the beating of my heart
and the roaring of the clouds
as they stray beneath
your summits –
your sharp-tipped
forked
tongue.
X
Ararat:
what
were you called
before man named you?
Before words existed
for stone & fire
or mountain & ocean.
What
name did you call
your creator?
what name did she call you?
XI
Ararat:
the human body
has 206 bones:
how many bones
lie beneath your rubble, rock, and ice?
how many centuries
will you hold your secrets?
The human heart
has no bones;
love has no skeleton;
forgiveness not made of flesh.
XII
Ararat:
I
find a postcard
with your photograph
taken over a hundred years ago –
you have not changed.
On the back,
in black ink
a message is scrawled
in Armenian letters
I cannot read;
now slightly smeared
by tears or rain
they lie curled
like ancient fruit
in a paper coffin:
this confluence of time
and science
sadness or weather –
your
unmarked grave.
