Poems of Siamanto

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[1 - The kotchnak is a small wooden board that is beaten with a stick to arouse the sleepers.] 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.

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[2 - Andastan corresponds to our Thanksgiving Day.] is about to begin. To-day is the dawn of the harvest’s blessing.

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[3 - The thoner is a round, open fireplace built in the ground.] will burn.
Behold all significance, all reason, all law, purpose, cleanliness and greatness of incomprehensible life!
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,