| |
January, 1917
Land of Armenia,
Upon diamond mountains, hoisted upon eternal columns, you are
a land reaching out into the sky, a land of turquoise. Among lands, you stand as an unassailable, virtuous patriarch true to your faith and your God, preserving everlastingly your song, your pagan temple. The parching Turanian and Arabian winds, the frost of the Sarmatian flats have been unable and are unable to extinguish your sacred flame. You are the hydrant of light, of gentleness, of purity. From your mountains, your rivers glide down to the lands of barbarians carrying, disseminating beneficence and blessedness upon them.
You have been a warrior and a martyr of many centuries; has
there been one more unfortunate, more utterly tormented, more bloodied
than you? The innumerable, countless enemy came from the south and
the north, the east and the west, and like a venomous snake lodged itself
into your corpus, never detaching itself thereafter, sucking your noble blood for centuries...The enemy came and became a neighbor of yours, murdering your brother and appropriating his land and home, and thrusting his deathly spear in your heart...
Your splendid language became corrupted, your arts declined, and your creative spirit was shackled.
You shared your bread with your neighbor. You forgave and Blessed your neighbor in your churches, but you only came to have enemies - not a single friend, not a single friend in the whole world. They Destroyed your portals and edifying monasteries, they toppled your cottages over your sons, they asphyxiated your daughters in their hearts, ground up your children beneath hoofs in your granaries, knocked you down, but your spirit remained extant like your Ararat...
My sacred people, I love, I worship your murky cottages, your tearful bread and your bloodied plough. I worship every single smashed sculpture of your ruined monasteries and I caress their sacred moss.
You have not died, you are immortal, you yourselves represent immortality and the idea of eternity.
Armenian spirit, you floret of beauty, of enigmas and miracles...You know that the day shall arrive and with an infant's tenderness your blossoms will germinate, will bloom after the bloody nightmare of centuries, and their scent will intoxicate nations, poets will consecrate their songs with it...Butterflies with bright wings, and golden-jacketed bees will descend from the stars in order to imbibe the eternal ambrosia from your cup.
Armenian spirit, you sapphrine fountain rising from diamond
mountains, your flow has been mudied by the enemy who has interlaced
its howls with your harmonies, but you know that the day will come when with a new dawn, with the bright smile of a child, you will babble away.
With new ballads you will sprinkle dew in the fields, and provide song to
the shepherd's harp, and to the rose-crowned maidens' dances - impetus
and flight...
Like your powerful rivers, overflowing with old cares, you will go
empty into the common sea of humanity with new, powerful and profound
songs, harmonizing your new melodies with those of the whole.
Armenian spirit, soaring like the mountains of Armenia, you are a powerful spirit of diamond, sun-loving, pure and divine...
...Land of Armenia, your sons used to rest their heads upon nests
of nightingales and now, upon those of scorpions- You are my ruined
and pillaged familial home. Instead of your blessed plough, the snake
furrows your centuries-old sacred soil. Instead of skylarks – crows. In
place of navasard deer, the heels of the predatory enemy muddy your
still waters. But you know that the day must come, just as the sun does,
when nests of nightingales will rejuvenate, when the furrows of peasants
will be replenished with sacrosanct wheat. Your sons of genius, once
again, will put on aprons of toil, and the hammer and the ax, the
compass and the pulley will come alive...Upon your new, paved roads,
caravans will journey bringing treasures from the lands of distant nations
and languages, and will return to all corners of the world with the
miracles you have created... |
