ARMENIAN POEMS

Contents | Table of contents [as in the book] | Preface | Introduction

APPENDIX: The Armenian Women | The Armenian Church
Bibliography | Comments on the first edition of "Armenian Poems"

SIAMANTO (Atom Yarjanian) was born at Akn, Asia Minor, in 1878, of prosperous parents, who later moved to Constantinople. He was well educated. Abdul Hamid’s massacres made a deep impression on him. He sympathized with the revolutionary movement, and left Constantinople. Thrown upon his own resources by his father’s death, he led the life of a poor student in Paris, Vienna, Zurich and Lausanne. When the new constitution was proclaimed in Turkey, he returned to Constantinople, devoted himself to writing, and supported his younger brothers and sisters. A volume of poems published in 1902 under the pen name of Siamanto had made him famous, and other volumes followed. After the Adana massacres he came to America and spent a year in Boston, editing the Armenian paper Hairenik. He then returned to Constantinople, and he is believed to have been among the group of educated and influential Armenians of that city who were massacred in 1915, after barbarous tortures. Siamanto was a man of lovable character, and is considered one of the greatest Armenian poets.

1. The Song of the Knight
2. The Mother's Dream
3. Prayer
4. My Tears
5. The Young Wife's Dream
6. Thirst
7. The Starving

1. THE SONG OF THE KNIGHT.

THE sun is up, the hour has come for starting, O my steed!
A moment wait till I pass my foot through thy stirrup glittering clear.
I read my Aim in thy shining eyes, that know and understand.
Oh, joy of joys! Oh, blest be thou, my steed, my steed so dear!

My body still is firm and light with the joy and spring of youth,
And on thy saddle I shall perch like an eagle, proud and free.

The golden oats that I gave to thee in plenty, O my steed!
Have made mad life through thy form flame up; how fleet thy course will be!

Galloping thou wilt fly along, fly ever upon thy way,
And sparks from the strokes of thy brazen shoes will blossom as we go past.
Let us grow drunk with our rapid course like heroes, O my steed!
And, infinitely wing’ed like the wind, drink in the blast!

The boundless space before thy pace recedes and disappears,
The sinful cities with all their crimes bow down beneath thy tread.
Black flocks of crows that tremble thy swiftness to behold
Are seeking shelter in the clouds, the thick clouds overhead.

The sad earth seems below us and we up among the stars;
Thou no abyss nor downward slope dost heed, with eyes aflame;
There is no obstacle, no rock that can thy flight impede;
Impatient, fain wouldst thou attain the summit of the Aim.

My fleet, fleet steed! My idol of snow-white marble fair!
With all my soul I worship thee! As on our course we fly,
My dreamy brow is burning with the flames of mine Ideal;
Oh, spur me onward to my Aim! Slave of thy footsteps I!

I am the slave of thy fleet steps, child of the hurricane!
Speed on, athirst for vengeance, O swift, swift steed of mine!
A needless halt I spurn and hate, with all my anger’s might.
Ours are the summits, and the wreath of victory is thine!

Thy delicate cream-white body boils with thine ardent fire of life;
Thy tail is a cataract; rushing down, like a hurricane it blows.
Within thine eyes, so bright and keen, there shine two flaming stars;
The ring of thy swift shoes forges fear, as onward our journey goes.

I told thee that I am thy slave, for liberty athirst.
Oh, bear me swiftly toward the South, away from this frontier!
We shall be clothed with suns and blood, beyond the stately heights
Of Ararat and Aragatz. Speed on, my courser dear!

I hold no whip within my hand, my courser, thou art free;
Upon thy back, that glistens like a lily white and fair,
I only shed sweet touches of my fingers as we go.
They touch thy bright flesh like a stream of honey dropping there.

Thou hast no bridle upon thy neck, no bit within thy mouth;
Enough for me one wave of hair from thy full mane backward flung,
I have no need of stirrup-irons for my feet to grip thy sides;
A silver saddle thou hast alone, a saddle with pearls bestrung.

For my native valleys I yearn, I yearn, the valleys that hold my home,
But halt thou never, my courser swift, the star-strewn heavens below!
Away by the mouths of caverns deep like a shadow thou must pass,
From forests, vineyards and gardens green still farther and farther go.

Who knows, perchance a maiden fair by the side of a running brook
Might hand me a cluster of golden grapes, and proffer a draught of wine;
My soul might understand her, and she like a sister smile on me—
But I do not wish to be lost in dreams; halt not, swift steed of mine I

Thou wilt pass by the shadowy bowers of my birthplace, Eden-fair;
The nightingale, the nightingale, fain would I drink her song!
The rose-scent, on my pilgrimage, I have dreamed of many a year.
Oh, how my heart is yearning! But halt not, speed along.

And in my pathway haply old corpses might arise,
Their shrouds upon their shoulders, their hands held out to me,
Approach me—me the wretched!—and breathe upward to mine ear
Their loves and vengeance ne’er to be forgot—but onward flee!

I shudder at the ruins and at barren, helpless pangs.
My courser, near the ashes of the cities make no stay!
Oh, tears, the tears of others, they choke me without ruth;
The woe, the griefs of others drive me mad, upon my way!

Oh, do not halt, my courser, where these corpses scattered lie!
Fly far away from graveyards, where white shades of dead men be.
I cannot bear, I tell thee, I cannot bear again
The death of my dear native land with anguished eyes to see!

Behold the landscape of the place in which I had my birth!
At sight of it my longing glance with tears grows moist and glows.
But yet I would not shed them; nay, do not pause or stay,
My steed, my steed of swiftest flight! My Aim no weakness knows.

Lo! ’tis Euphrates sounding. Why, river, dost thou roar?
Thy son is passing. Why so dark the flood thy shore that laves?
I am thy son. Oh, do not rage! Hast thou forgotten me?
I with thy current would speed on, and would outstrip thy waves.

The memory of my childhood draws from me tears of blood;
A dreamy youth who used to stray along these banks of thine,
All full of hope, with sunlight mad, and happy with his dreams—
But ah! what am I saying? Pause not, swift steed of mine!

Behold the glorious autumn, which vaguely dies around!
Upon my brow a yellow leaf has fallen like a dream.
Is it my death it stands for, or the crowning of my faith?
What matter? On, my neighing steed, sweep onward with the stream!

Perchance it was the last sere leaf of my ill-omened fate
That fell upon us even now. What matter? Speed away!
From the four corners of the land are echoing the words,
“Ideal, O free-born Ideal, halt not, halt not nor stay!”

I worship thee! Now like a star thou shootest on thy course;
Thou art as fleet, thou art as free, as is the lightning’s flame;
And through the wind and with the wind like eagles now we soar.
I am thy knight, I am thy slave; oh, lift me to my Aim!

Down from the summits of the rocks, the dread and cloudy peaks,
The cataracts, the cataracts are falling in their might!
Their currents white are pure, my steed, as thine own snow-white form,
And their imperious downward sweep is savage as thy flight.

But why now doth a shudder through all thy body run?
Oh, what has chanced, my hero? Why do thy looks grow dark?
Oh, turn thine eyes away from me, thine eyes with trouble filled;
Past the horizons fly along, fly like a wind-borne bark!

I heard the wailing and the cries, entreaties and laments,
From ruined huts and cities that reached us on our way.
But ah! what use in pausing all powerless before pain?
Our task is to relieve it; then do not halt nor stay.

Through the death-agony, my steed, we passed with tearless eyes.
Oh, do not halt! Oh, do not stay! Brave be that heart of thine!
From this time onward, I will burn Hope’s torches blazing bright.
To halt means death to us; pause not, O gallant steed of mine!

Aloft on thy galloping form, full oft, in our journey ere to-day
I have heard how thy swift, spark-scattering hoofs, as ever we forward flee.
Have many and many a time crushed bones, that fell beneath their tread,
And the skulls with their empty sockets dark gazed at me—didst thou see?

I tell thee, under thy shoes I heard the skeletons break and crash,
But I kept silence. My lips are dumb. Halt not, halt not, my steed!
I will bury my sobs and sighs of grief in my soul’s abysmal depths.
Let nothing live but my anger hot! Pause not, but onward speed!

Oh, pause not, falter not in thy course, wild creature of marble white!
Tears will not banish the Pain of Life, nor drive out its woe and wrong.
Nay, the Ideal shall toll, shall toll the bells of glowing wrath.
The cranes, far flying, will call to us; oh, follow their distant song!

But where does thy path lead? What is this? My steed, hast thou lost thy mind?
The ashes! Oh, the desolate plains of ashes and ruins gray!
Like fog the gray dust rises up to stifle and choke our breath.
Oh, tear thy way through these frightful mounds, break through them and speed away!

Lift up thy forehead, lift up thine eyes, let me cover them with my hand!
Halt not, ’tis the Crimson, the Crimson dread; red blood beneath us lies.
Across my face to blind mine eyes I have pulled my fluttering scarf;
Halt not! What good would it do, my steed, to pause here with useless sighs?

Ah, once, accompanied by my griefs, my lyre shed tears of blood;
Weeping I hate from this time on; thou only art my soul.
Thou breathest battle, for glory keen, and I am thy prince, thy slave!
Thy form was worshipped by glorious Greece. Oh, lift me to my Goal!

The sound of the wind is like a horn that is winded far away;
The forests, ranged like troops of war, stood ready as we passed.
At the wild ringing of thy hoofs, old hopes like giants woke;
Old laws are crushed, old tears are shed, old sounds are dying fast.

And in thy flight, at daybreak, on a lofty table-land,
New giants, new insurgents, new heroes we shall spy.
The sons of suffering are they, who in this hostile age
Were born in blood, are wroth with blood, and wish in blood to die.

When we see columns rolling up, armed with the hurricane,
We by their side will march along the pathway to the Aim.
Of glory and the crowning of the martyrs I shall sing;
My lyre will play, that gallant day, my Torches burn and flame!

The day has dawned, has dawned at last! I am thy knight, thy slave!
The slope is difficult and steep, but, breathing heavily,
Thou must fly on—one effort more, amid the fires of morn!
I am athirst for victory, my noble steed, like thee.

A few more ringing steps, my steed, and one last bound! and then
What a procession, what a host, all glad and full of might!
’Tis Freedom’s pioneers; their swords flash out life-giving rays,
And Brotherhood they celebrate in morning’s glorious light.

Here may’st thou halt. Be blest, my steed! Worthy of God art thou!
Tears fill my soul as mine Ideal I gaze on and admire.
Thy triumph is the mighty law of beauty infinite.
Lo, there six sombre centuries are standing, armed with fire!

I, armed already, will arm thee. O’er my shoulder burns thy torch.
They like the tempest wish to walk, under the dawning’s glow,
Laden with justice. Oh, the land is barren and athirst!
Lo, from our flight the giant Hope sparks in the paths will sow!

2. THE MOTHER’s DREAM.

Let me write now and tell you of my dream.
It was upon the midnight of All Saints.
Sudden before me your four brothers knelt;
They wore no shrouds, no vestiges of flesh;
Groping in darkness, with abysmal eyes,
Weeping before their mother thus they came
To tell their memories of other days.

“ Mother, the dawning of the bygone days!
We four together, from beneath the ground,
Today have sought once more your little door
To tap on it, companioned by the storm.
Mother, be not afraid, no strangers we!
And, lonely in your slumber, wait at least
And let us watch your face in death’s dark night! ”

“Mother, the holiness of bygone days!
Out of my heart, ’neath our poor graveyard’s earth,
Mother, a flower of love for you has grown!”

“Mother, the sweetness of the bygone days!
For you two jars with my salt tears are filled.”

“Mother, the happiness of bygone days!
For you have burning roses, flowers of hope,
Sprung into fiery blossom from my soul!”

“ O mother, the heroic manliness
Of bygone days! Out of my breast-bones now
Two shields for your protection have been wrought.”

“Mother, your peerless beauty in the past!
How many furrows now have marked your brow!”
(Thus spake your eldest brother). “All alone
Under your roof-tree, how can you endure?
These seven years, we seven times have tapped
Upon your little door, but till to-night
We never yet have found the door unclosed.
What traveler do you await to-night?
Behold, your fragile hut is tottering,
Like to a heap of mouldering cofiin-boards.
See how the leaves, storm-rent, fall from the trees!
The guiltless doves are dying in the brook,
And still upon the threshold of your home,
Mother, the black snakes lick our dried-up blood.
The garden has no leaf, no fruit, no brier.
We four together have been through the hut,
And at the sight of us our broken swords
Gave out once more a single flash of light.
Empty the larder was, and in the barn
A white lamb bleated, biting at its hoofs.
Mother, the plenty of the bygone days!
The love and pity of the bygone days!
How can you live here in your empty hut,
Here in your empty hut how can you live?”

The four were mute; but when I spoke your, name
And sobbed tempestuously in my dream,
They wildly, with bowed heads, began to weep.

“But still,” I said, “your brother is alive—
The little one, who did not see you die.
It is for him alone I live to-day.”

Then they burst forth, and poured upon mine eyes
The terrible black tear drops of the dead.
“A brother, oh, we have a brother yet,
A brother, oh, a brother in the world!
Mother, the misery of coming days!
Hereafter, how shall we to earth return?
Now how, oh, how shall we to earth return?”

3. PRAYER.

THE swans, in discouragement, have migrated
from the poisonous lakes this evening,
And sad sisters dream of brothers under the prison walls.
Battles have ended on the blossoming fields of lilies,
And fair women follow coffins from underground passages,
And sing, with heads bowed down towards the ground.

Oh, make haste! Our aching bodies are frozen in these pitiless glooms.
Make haste towards the chapel, where life will be more merciful,
The chapel of the graveyard where our brother sleeps!

An orphan swan is suffering within my soul,
And there, over newly-buried bodies,
It rains blood—it pours from mine eyes.

A crowd of cripples pass along the paths of my heart,
And with them pass barefooted blind men,
In the divine hope of meeting some one in prayer.

And the red dogs of the desert howled all one night,
After hopelessly moaning over the sands
For some unknown, incomprehensible grief.

And the storm of my thoughts ceased with the rain;
The waves were cruelly imprisoned under the frozen waters;
The leaves of huge oaks, like wounded birds,
Dropped with cries of anguish.

And the dark night was deserted, like the vast infinite;
And, with the lonely and bloody moon,
Like a myriad motionless marble statues,
All the dead bodies of our earth arose to pray for one another.

4. MY TEARS.

I WAS alone with my pure-winged dream in the valleys my sires had trod;
My steps were light as the fair gazelle’s, and my heart with joy was thrilled;
I ran, all drunk with the deep blue sky, with the light of the glorious days;
Mine eyes were filled with gold and hopes, my soul with the gods was filled.

Basket on basket, the Summer rich presented her fruit to me
From my garden’s trees—each kind of fruit that to our clime belongs;
And then from a willow’s body slim, melodious, beautiful,
A branch for my magic flute I cut in silence, to make my songs.

I sang; and the brook all diamond bright, and the birds of my ancient home,
And the music pure from heavenly wells that fills the nights and days,
And the gentle breezes and airs of dawn, like my sister’s soft embrace,
United their voices sweet with mine, and joined in my joyous lays.

To-night in a dream, sweet flute, once more I took you in my hand;
You felt to my lips like a kiss—a kiss from the days of long ago.
But when those memories old revived, then straightway failed my breath,
And instead of songs, my tears began drop after drop to flow.

5. THE YOUNG WIFE’s DREAM.

YEAR after year, sitting alone at my window,
I gaze on thy path, my pilgrim heart-mate,
And by this writing I wish once more to sing
The tremors of my body and mind, left without aguardian.
Ah! dost thou not recall the sun on the day of thy departure?
My tears were so plentiful and my kisses so ardent,
Thy promises were so good and thy return was to be so early!
Dost thou not recall the sun and my prayers on the day of thy departure,
When I sprinkled water on the shadow of thy steed from my water-jar,
That the seas might open before thee,
And the earth might bloom beneath thy feet?
Ah, the sun of the day of thy departure has changed to black night,
And the tears of waiting, beneath the shower of so many years,
Have poured from mine eyes like stars on my cheeks,
And behold! their roses have withered.
It is enough. Through longing for thee, I feel like plucking out my hair;
I am still under the influence of the wine of thy cup,
And a mourner for thy absent superb stature;
And, wounding my knees with kneeling at the church door,
I entreat for thee, turning towards the west.
Let the seas some day dry up from shore to shore,
And let the two worlds approach each other in an instant!
Then I should have no need of heaven or of the sun.
Return! I am waiting for thy return on the threshold of our cottage.
My hands empty of thy hands, I dream of thee, in my black robes.
Return, like the sweet fruits of our garden!
My heart’s love keeps my kiss for thee.
Oh, my milk-white hips have not yet known motherhood,
And I have not yet been able to decorate a swaddling cloth
With my wedding veil, wrought with golden thread;
And I have not yet been able to sing, sitting beside a cradle,
The pure, heavenly lullaby of Armenian mothers.
Return! My longing has no end,
When the black night comes thus to unfold its shrouds,
When the owls in the courtyard shriek with one another.
When my sobs end and my tears become bloody,
Lonely in my dreams of a despairing bride,
With my hands, like a demon, I begin
To sift upon my head the earth of my grave, which is drawing near to me.

6. THIRST.

MY soul is listening to the death of the twilight.
Kneeling on the far-away soil of suffering, my
soul is drinking the wounds of twilight and of
the ground; and within itself it feels the raining down of tears.

And all the stars of slaughtered lives, so like to
eyes grown dim, in the pools of my heart this
evening are dying of despair and of waiting.

And the ghosts of all the dead to-night will wait
for the dawn with mine eyes and my soul. Perhaps, to satisfy their thirst for life, a drop of light will fall upon them from on high.

7. THE STARVING.

O YE ancient and undisturbed Armenian plains of kind mornings,
And ye, golden fields, rich orchards, and pastures smiling with life,
Ye valleys covered with marble, flower-beds and kind and fruitful gardens—
Ye that create wine, which causes self-forgetfulness, and eternal, sacred daily bread!
Ye indescribable paradises of plants, birds, flowers and songs!
To-day, once more, at the lonely hour of my returning memory, of my sorrowful grief and delirium,
I call on your spirits, in bitterness live your life, and hopelessly weep for you!

Out of the blue, boundless space the fiery dawns open their lilies,
And lo! the proud cock makes his silvery voice resound.
The kotchnaks* click from village to village;
An harmonious flute joyously announces invitations;
And the herds scatter themselves over the hilltops,
With the dance of the industrious and busy bees.
And the peace sings. The flowers tremble. The buds seem to have the glances of saintly women.

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* The kotchnak is a small wooden board that is beaten with a stick to arouse the sleepers.
___________________

Art thou reminded of the white Voice of the flour-mill, the ever-moving body of fertility and labor,
Which turns its obedient and tireless wheel by the billows of the unbridled torrent of the valley,
Apportioning the blessing of its flour to the cities and villages, from time immemorial?

The brooks flow through the velvet mosses like chil dren’s nakedness;
The morning smoke of fireplaces and chimneys alike pours out its incense.
The beautiful young women with marble breasts go, pitcher in hand, to the springs for the diamond-pure water.
Others draw near the rosebush, to sing with the night ingale of their new-born love.

It is the happy climate of the harvest, full of good tidings, that is born.
Nature is pregnant, and the farmers, who have drunk of the fruit and effort of their skill,
Crowd around the plains. The scythes on their shoulders flash like hope.
Andastan* is about to begin. To-day is the dawn of the harvest’s blessing.

___________________
* Andastan corresponds to our Thanksgiving Day.
___________________

Let a prayer for nature, for beneficent nature, rise from men’s lips!
May the soil grant its innumerable ears of wheat to us, and to humanity in the four corners of the earth,—
To the neighbor, to the friend, to the enemy, to the evil man and to the stranger!
Let all hunger be appeased, and let all thirst be quenched with the bright water!

This celebration is solemnized from north to south, from east to west,
For the abundance of every race, every class, every caste, every field and every harvest.
Prayers are solemnized, and sweetened, and purified; and out of the mist of incense
Smiles of joy brighten the face of the good peasant with sunny hope.

The ears still standing kiss one another once more with thoughts of the wind;
The sickles move, and golden seas, seas, seas are being mown;
And sheaves, bundle by bundle, through the shadows of the fertile evening,
Like a multitude of stars that have rained down, meditate motionless from field to field.

The day is done; and with the blooming rose and the songs of early morn,
Huge oxen, pair by pair, around the threshing rings will thresh the wonderful wheat.
The flour mills will work, the thoner* will burn.
Behold all significance, all reason, all law, purpose, cleanliness and greatness of incomprehensible life!

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* The thoner is a round, open fireplace built in the ground.
___________________

O all ye strange thoughts of my suffering, avaunt
for this evening!

My unhappy dream in ashes disclosed its wounded aspect.
See! the endless golden fields of yesterday wear the terrible appearance of graveyards,
And the waters of ruined fountains, so like the tears of a dying man,
Join the sobbing brooks, and go to moisten the black aspect of the horrible ruins.

In place of the infinite goodness of ears of wheat, yellow thistles have sprung up,
And over the fruit-bearing gardens the dark cawing of black crows is dying away.
With their arms outstretched against the horizon, gaunt and frail trees
With the rising of the winds are crushed against one another, like the skeletons of countless dead.
The ill-omened tempest flies along the paths by night with roaring as of a forest,
Demolishing half-ruined villages and roofs beneath the anger of its sweep,
Opening earth-mounds and graves, strangling birds in the caves.
Meanwhile from the caverns the howling of the devour ing wild beasts tolls the knell of death.

There is no harvest, no harvester, no sower and no earth to plow.
Hungry oxen bellow mournfully. Vegetation is dying with the flowers.
The plow in the corner of the barn awaits the new and never-returning spring.
The cock crows no more. The dawn, it seems, like the blood of my race, has sunk into the depths of the earth.

The innumerable caravans of wretchedness, from every side, migrate towards the plains;
Tragically beating their breasts, they frame prayers, hoping against hope,
They celebrate the fields of bygone dawns, they im plore, they bleed.
“O Lord, we are hungry, have pity on us!
Nature, have pity on us! Men, we are hungry! Hu manity, we are hungry!”

The current of water carries the corpse of the miller,
And the mad flour-mill turns vainly, like an empty coffin.
Grinding the horror, the wailing, the death of all that surrounds it,
Madly it turns, gnawing at its millstone and wheels.

The new-born babes, with terrible eyes, suck the dry breasts.
Oh, the vision of Armenian mothers, the nearly-blinded eyes of the mothers before all these!
Oh, where is the road, where is the abyss, where is forgetfulness, where is the awful pit?
But death does not come, it does not come. Like the longed-for salvation, it does not come.

The tremulous old women, groaning beneath their head-coverings,
Amid the ashes of their ruined homes, at sunrise, with savage blood all around them,
Among the ashes of their fallen homes, kneeling diligently before their wooden kneading-troughs,
Bake in haste a little bread for the starving ones.

And the miserable throng of beggars with shattered bodies
Wander along the painful road like phantoms,
And, though disheartened with knocking at the doors of enemies, friends and pious folk,
They once more return, again shed tears, once more beg, once more suffer the agonies of death.

Hear this sobbing, supplication, begging! “We are hungry, we are hungry!”
There are those who tear their hair, there are those who shed tears like drops of lead,
There are those who hope they are already dead under cover of a pall of silence,
There are those who once more dig the hard earth with their bleeding nails.
There are those who fall one upon another in the graves,
There are those who still look for plants and roots with stubborn hope,
There are those who begin horribly to dance, arm in arm with frightful madness;
And others, terrible to tell, already approach the corpses, unburied and awaiting burial.

O ye hostile thoughts of my suffering, avaunt, all of ye, upon this evening!

Contents | Table of contents [as in the book] | Preface | Introduction

APPENDIX: The Armenian Women | The Armenian Church
Bibliography | Comments on the first edition of "Armenian Poems"