Yeghishe Charent
Poems of Yeghishe Charent

I Love the Sun Sweet Taste of Armenia

I love the sun-backed taste of Armenian words,
the lilt of our ancient lutes in sweet laments,
our blood-red, fragrant roses bending
as in Nayirian dances, danced still by our girls.

I love the deep night sky, our lakes of light,
the winter winds that howl like dragons exhaling fire.
The meanest huts with blackened walls are dear to me;
each of the thousand year old city stones.

Wherever I go, I take our mournful music,
our steel forged letters turned to prayers.
However, sharp my wounds or drained of blood
or orphaned, my yearning heart turns there with love.

There is no brow, no mind, like Narek's, Koutchak's,
No mountain peak like Ararat's.
Search the world there is no crest so white, so holy.
So like an unreached road to glory, Masis mountain that I love.

Fatherland

Snow-wrapped mountains and blue lakes,
Skies like dreams of the soul,
Skies like children's eyes.
I was alone. You were with me.
When I heard the whispers of the lake,
And looked unceasingly into the distance,
There rose in me that old longing
For you, that dream, holy, star-filled, infinite.
In the clear evocative sunset
I called, called to the snow covered mountains;
Night fell, darkening the distance,
Mingling my soul with the starry dark.

Our Language

Our language is flexible and barbaric
masculine and rough. At the same
time keeps an inner light, a lighthouse
lit with an eternal flame.

Honorable, ingenious craftsmen
have carved its ancient stones
for centuries, so they shine
like crystal. Sometimes weather blown

mountain rock, always with its own
animus. Today, it is by design,
if we chip it, to stop rust
from settling on our minds.

Neither Narek's rustling parchment
nor Toumanian's bright Lori-grown
dialect can sheathe its modern spirit
-not even Derian's silken tone.

But wait. From the iron harvest
our new language will be honed
to hold the deep and homesick thoughts
that are ours, ours alone.

PARTING WORDS

I have put out so many fires in my eyes
And so many stars have I put out in my desperate soul.
Don't curse my life as you leave – it's just a memory now,
My life will pass and fade away, but my song will live on.
My life will pass and fade away like a fire in a swamp,
Inconsolable and dull, without hope, without aim.
In my songs no one recognizes me, you know,
As if it were another singing the blue longing of my soul.
Forever mute and estranged, I have wandered in silence.
No one, no one knows who I am, what my life is about.
All they know is in my life I have written a few songs,
As I know that you exist, as I know that you are loved.
I have sung to your soul, to your luminous smile,
To the sacred sadness of your eyes and your face.
My life abandoned in infinity, I have sung the profound love
And the longing of my arms that could never reach you.
Oh, sister, my foggy evening is coming closer,
How can I stop my longing soul from weeping?
How, how can I accept the drained cup of my fate,
So that my hands do not shake, so that my days forgive me?
And what if suddenly I start doubting myself,
And my sacred longing for you begins to feel like a lie?
Whatever happens, sister, don't curse, when we part,
The pitiable longing of my arms that could never reach you.

1917

GIRL LIKE A LAMPSHADE

Girl like a lampshade – with the Virgin Mary’s eyes,
Tubercular, transparent, a body in a dream,
Girl – blue, agate, milky, enchanting,
Girl like a lampshade …
What can I do, what can I do so that my soul doesn’t die,
So that my soul doesn’t burn out in your agate eyes?
What can I do to keep the rainbow tricolored,
To keep the depth of my soul from fading and burning?
Girl like a lampshade – with the Virgin Mary’s eyes,
Tubercular, transparent, a body in a dream,
Girl – blue, agate, milky, enchanting,
Girl like a lampshade …

1916-1917

BLUE

Blue is the soul's prayer, sister,
Blue is sorrow.
Blue is longing, transparent and pure,
Clear and immaculate.
Blue is the morning, infinite and wet,
Of a sister's eyes.
My soul in the blue helplessly wept
On one ancient night.
Blue is the ringing of the morning bell
Calling for prayer.
Blue is a tear, blue is the dew
Of soul and heaven.
Through blue true words flow
From heaven to heaven.
In the labyrinth of the blue
My soul – a sanctified seal.
Whatever is not, and has yet to come
In a child's heart-
Flows like wine of light
In the blue of the soul.

1916-1917

Travelers of the Milky Way

We are two travelers of the Milky Way,
Two travelers in rags.
We have cherished the sadness of our souls,
Full of nostalgic dreams and love.
We have cherished the sadness of our souls,
These nostalgic dreams and this love.
And from early morning until darkness falls,
We like to wander and forever dream.
Our eyes have held the magic sight
Of distant and heavenly paths,
As we tread these earthly roads
Where countless souls once dreamt and now are gone.
Our childhood vanished like a haze,
Sunless, disconsolate and gray-
Our childhood vanished in delirium,
And we went away. We can never return.
We left in silence and tirelessly walked,
Envisioning eternal distance.
Our life became an everlasting quest -
Absurd, unusual and dark.
And in these piebald, varied days
Our hearts burned with life so many times,
But our eyes saw no sun
And our hearts, no distant lights.
Our misty eyes forever searched
The gilded paths of the Milky Way,
And its boundless, infinite span
In the eyes of every passerby.
But in those eyes we never glimpsed heaven,
Nor in their hearts a golden sun.
And our orphaned, agonizing hearts
Broke into pieces from their lifeless gaze.
I wanted to sing praises to God
And the glory of luminous love and bread -
My heart swelled… But instead
I sang the anguish of these gloomy days…
And the legend of an infinite blue-eyed happiness -
The story of a heavenly connection, -
Remained forever buried in my eyes-
My heart hardened, turned barren and dark.
No one understood us in this life-
They laughed at our shining eyes,
They jeered at our burning longings
And retreated. Not one brought us a sliver of light.
The sister laughed, the friend mocked,
The stranger cursed and hurried past.
Only the whore granted us a kiss,
And the madman murmured a greeting in the mist.
But never mind that our days passed like a fever,
And our life became an inconsolable delirium-
We shall smile, happily smile as we die
For we dreamed in our dreams and went away.

BUFFOON

"And your soul like wine
Will inundate their black
And morbid floor."
The Feast, Ballad I
Would you like me to sing
For you
– Now?
I sing so that you feel
Whatever you want -
Be it love or death.
I sing to move your hearts.
I give my song of light
To you all,
Even to the last whore.
Do you like at all
This bearish tenderness
Of mine?
I sing despite myself.
Whatever I sing – whether about love,
Or death,
It is never fake.
Listen to my songs,
Here they are:

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