Poems of Siamanto

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