Myth of Arrival

One of the miracles of being human I find most satisfying is the simple realization that pain cannot last forever. I am not speaking for a particular person or a group or set of people — pain is an identity as much as love — I speak only for myself. However, evidentially, pain will pass away. The scream cools. Objects of horror return to being … just objects. John Coltrane's spiritual masterpiece, A Love Supreme, is a testament to all this. It is fabulously simple and yet gratifyingly complex. In every language the idea of a love redeemed translates as the same. That is amazing to me.

The Armenian phrase, "I love you," Ies kez sirum 'em, fits nicely with Datevik Hovanesian's song Yarimo (which translates roughly as "To my love"), which is from her CD, Listen to my Heart/ Lsir Sirts. I have had a lot of fun listening to her work. She is an amazing jazz singer. So, Datevik-jan, as I was taught to say when living in Gyumri, "thank you very much," shat shnorha'galuts'un!

Dawn comes. “A Love Supreme” scratching, swinging,
bluing, singing. One lone moonbeam – my scream
cools. Love redeemed when you taught me to sing.
To speak. Your words. Your words. My dream. My dream.
My scream still burns – desert cattle cars rang
through the moonlight and the breeze and partridge
sang and all the world's crusted burned skin sang
with this — Language of memory. Language
against forgetting. Against the mayhem
of this past. Cut out my scream, redeem my
vast love, lover. You who loves me. You who
taught me to love again. Ies kez sirum
'em. I love you. Ies kez sirum 'em. I
love you. Ies kez sirum 'em. I love you.

Year after year I forget more and more of the Armenian words I use to know. It is a pity, I love the language so but who can I speak it with in Grand Rapids, Michigan? I know no one. The most I can turn up are bizarre little stories that don't help a lot:

The popcorn truck was improvised by an Armenian cabinet maker who came here in 1914 to escape Turkish massacres. His popcorn wagon and popcorn trucks were familiar sights in downtown Grand Rapids for generations. For years, the word “popcorn” was virtually synonymous with “Armenian” in Grand Rapids. From the Public Museum.

Ah, Western Michigan, I recall people would ask me in Gyumri, Du Hey 'es? or "Are You Armenian?" But Du Popcorn 'es?, or "Are You Popcorn?" doesn't have the same ring.

However, when I do learn something worth knowing or remembering I try to put it into my poems. Of late I have been devouring Datevik Hovanesian's music from her CD, Listen to my Heart/ Lsir Sirts. The phrase in Armenian, "I am burning," ervum em', comes from a title track.

Skim by these holes, sink holes, a crust covered
in skin. A crust, the foulest of – dust. Skim
the long ladle pool. Dust from skin – the word
for skin I've forgotten. Teach me the hymn
of your grandmother. Teach me how to burn.
Blackened pools long dried. Cattle cars now grim
rust burnt from your hymns – bodies all iron,
all bone, now rust. The right tongue can teach you
to fight, moonlight. The right door can open
everything. Sing that hymn, “I am burning,”
ervum em'. Not this crust skin; hymn about
your tongues ripped out and no one would listen.
Door shuts; voices on a record, skipping,
skimming, hissing – No way out. No way out.

I love the moon. No, let me take that back. I do not know the moon — I know the light in the sky; the feeling I get when I am all by myself, walking in a Michigan forest; the happiness moonlight brings me. One of my favorite sing-along songs, Me and the Moon, by Gaelic Storm, contains the wonderful lines, "Me and the moon stayed up all night;/ I brought the whiskey! He brought the light!/ A' quarter to three, we're feeling fine when the sun comes up I'm gonna miss my friend moonshine."

Even the darker side of luna, the Dionysian madness moonlight was suppose to bring, is a friend. As in the poem, Purple Valleys, by the quasi-Romantic poet Madison Julius Cawein, moonlight approaches, covering "Night with sensuous nudity./ Lo! again I hear her pant/ Breasting through the dewy glooms" — and yet for all the romance we have piled upon the moon there are times when what moonlight uncovers for us in the dark is so monstrous, so nightmarish, that we can never turn to it again as a metaphor. I found reference to the moonlight, lusniak gisher in Armenian, on jazz singer extraordinaire Datevik Hovanesian's CD, Listen to my Heart/ Lsir Sirts. I urge everyone to listen to her work, at least once.

Something is burning through these dry desert
streams. A thing – glowing, grating, fluoresce.
A storm is burning through these dreams. The dirt
from these cattle cars. It is a cloudless
night, I can see – no. I cannot speak this
language. These dreams. A scream. I cannot speak.
Things are burning. This sight is both a bliss
and a curse. Sight is a curse. I am weak,
moonlight, lusniak gisher; blind these screams
from me. Blind me. I loved you – now farewell.
I loved you, once, now you twist and deform,
moonlight, lusniak gisher – all my dreams;
this sound of flesh, light and firestorm; this smell
of fat melting and consuming firestorm.

The idea that the wind and the breezes will blow us trouble, as Billie Holiday once put it in the song Ill Wind — Blow, ill wind, blow away/ Let me rest today/ You're blowin' me no good/ No good — fascinates me. My adopted hometown, Gyumri, sits on the edge of a vast, flat and empty dry ocean bed. Somewhere out there, beyond anything I could see standing on the fortified walls that surround the western edge of the city, lies the ancient city of Kars, Turkey. The only thing that passed over the walls of Gyumri back in 1996 was wind; sometimes frightening in the winter, sometimes lazy in the dusty summer air.

The breeze, Hov Arek, is what Datevik Hovanesian sings about on her CD, Listen to my Heart/ Lsir Sirts. Throughout mythology and folklore the breeze has acted as an agent of change, a messenger for star-crossed lovers and a musician for those who cannot sing. However, the winds can also have a darker side; recording secrets, bearing witness to atrocities and keeping memory alive and it is important to keep memory alive.

I am ill from waiting for you — too long –
waited for you all — waited for you all.
I am ill with change. Daylong and nightlong;
changing unchanging, all restless. I crawl.
I stand. I faint. I – ill with signs. Sweating
in your breeze, hov arek. All so cold, shawl
cast down, eyes cast down. So ill. Shivering
desert. In all the cattle cars. Each wall
blocks you, little breeze, hov arek. Who pleads
for me? Who pleads? Listen to this dreadful
song I would sing. I would. My throat, bloody,
gags. I am ill. That is all. My throat bleeds.
My throat bleeds. That is all. Now my little
ill breeze, hov arek, you must sing for me.

To write is to let the world know what we have witnessed, we are told. Often I am cynical of poetry's positive effect on the world, but that has entirely to do with my own short-comings as a writer, a feeling that everything I do I cast into a void that never echoes back. A feeling that poetry forgets the moment it leaves my fingers. But as Nelson Mandela put it, "Poetry cannot block a bullet or still a sjambok, but it can bear witness to brutality — thereby cultivating a flower in a graveyard … It bears witness to the evil we would prefer to forget, but never can — and never should."

As a symbol, the partridge is a singer of truth and thus an instrument against forgetting. As a symbol, then, it makes sense to call upon the partridge if you are writing a poetry of witness. The Armenian word for partridge is gakavik. I learned it from the jazz singer, Datevik Hovanesian, whose CD, Listen to my Heart/ Lsir Sirts, should be on everyone's playlist. It is a marvelous collection of jazz standards, some well known and others I was unfamiliar with — but delighted with each and every song all the same.

Can a voice create milk from limestone, cure
cedars from bile? Little bird, whose outrage
do you sing? We are chattel. There's no pure
story, pure blood, pure song but this one; your
cattle cars. We are a world of mislaid
children, Partridge, Gakavik, ill with rage.
How could it be else? Memory will fade,
we are told. All of what we are, Partridge,
Gakavik, will fade. But my memory
is all that is me and the desert cliff
and high plateau keeps it all alive yet
limestone weeps as if all of this could be
forgotten – story, blood, song – yes as if
for a moment all of us could forget.