I lived my days by ones,
I lived my days by twos,
I tasted love
And torment and sorrows.
I am now weary
Of the days cramped and broad,
I am now weary
Of the sinful and of the good,
I am now weary
Of my wretched grief
And this yearning so poor,
So tree, unwrap your skin
And hold me within
Hold me within your skin
And I shall melt in you
As a spring blossom
In this flowerless day.
In the depths of your leaves
I shall glow
As some hidden sorrow
And I shall rest in deep sleep.
And when the storms come forth
To wrest me away from you,
I shall wake up, my tree,
To roar together with you.
I shall stretch with you,
I shall creak with you
And from the winds and storms
I shall be saved with you.
And on a secret night,
When all fall asleep,
I shall repeat
Magical words to you.
Slowly we shall go,
In secret we shall creep
And make her sleepless
In her sleep.
In her dreams
A magical tree
Will take human form,
Gently it will shake
And with a human voice,
As a bright legend,
Will tell her
Of an eternal, lost love
And endless yearning
And slowly
With our gleaming sorrow
We shall melt back into the earth.
Our sleepless friends
Are weaving webs for us.
Sleepless,
without complaint.
Not even making a sound,
Concentrating hard.
Our sleepless friends,
Concentrating friends
Weave webs for our minds
Every hour of every day.
Moving their thin, fragile legs,
Soft as darkness crushed in the fist,
Deformed as darkness in the fist,
They walk through the light
In silence
And weave soft webs
Around us,
Blending their gall with the earth
As some soft silk,
As something
That even in its destruction
there is no sound.
I saw that spider among the rocks.
The moonlight, that cool warmth,
That friendly, soft look at midnight
Which I
Began to love
As the sole flawless bequest
From my poor forefathers.
That same moonlight,
Which can blend with
The earth, with the rock, with the bush,
Even with darkness itself,
Was completely separated
From that black being.
As if this creature had entered the moon's domain
Only to show me that
Light can be passed through without being touched.
It might seem absurd,
But the submarine of the little spider
Had reached the bottom of the white seas of the moon
And was gliding in the depths of some strange,
Boundless space.
With these words, I do not mean to say
That there are no spiders.
I do not deny their existence.
Nor do I ask you
To see the little spider
As one of the people around you.
Nor do I ask you to swear with a mouth
Longing for blessings.
Nor to suddenly see all this
As a crazy joke.
Nor do I ask you
To believe me.
But the truth is,
Spiders do exist
And they still weave endless webs
In hiding.
They weave soft webs around us,
With a greedy Concentration,
Blending their gall with the earth
As some soft silk,
As something
That even in its destruction
There is no sound.
Freed from my ravings,
With a bright gaze in my eyes,
I was roaming the mountains
Of my fatherland-Armenia.
I was looking down valleys
Opened wide in their terror,
Filled with the echoes,
A thousand years old, of my forebears.
On top of each peak, a village,
At the top of the village, a torch,
The Armenian villages here...
Are bells hanging from the ore.
They toll down valleys,
They fly in the skies
And they scream dreams,
Storm ridden, but riding on storms.
Oh, even now that clear sound
Fills my heart
And with each note
My yearnings pile up.
Armenian land-a church
With many domes
Your bells are saying Mass
With divine, holy chimes.