Varujan VOSGANIAN
random song
the night my grandfather died
it snowed a lot
his gaping eyes were heavy and still
as if he had not been fully convinced
this is o.k. he used to say pointing to the two-wheeled cars and to the trains
which wobbled down a single track
o! this is o.k. too he laughed while we both were trying
to smooth the edge separating shadow from daylight
it’s fine! it’s o.k! while romping happily together
with hands outstretched to meet the haiku snowing
snow melted on my warm palms
yet on his it did not
we bent together over the glass urn
picking up red and black marbles at random
they kept rolling about sizzling down the snowdrifts
leaping jerkily across the stones as if
the town were a watch spring plucked out of its carapace
that now relaxed itself flat in curt pulses
in between which a woman climbed down a winding stair
swinging gracefully on her high heels
that’s fine he would say peering through the convoluted coffee
grounds whose glyphs he proceeded to spread over walls
and streets I read them on all fours living a randomized dream
pierced through by the moon’s slender tusks
then my granddad Setrak Meichian cracked the world open
like the two halves of a draughtboard
sipped slowly from his glass
and shuffling his rosary beads handed me
the dice cup to start playing the game of ghiulbahar
modulo 2
a blue forest floats over the city
the shards of the vulcanite birds
are still fuming while your pale body is bleeding
stepping over them
your pain is a kind of melancholia pain is a kind of
melancholia
we must dance without respite in order to stay motionless
on the blue forest sky
while boughs stream down against the windowpane
in the mirror your black eyes
your hairs black and warm from a burnt-down forest
from the light of the headlights from everlasting fires
from the flares between high tension wires
from the moon’s dying embers a blue forest
floats on a cat’s soft paws
in its wake the world covers itself in ringlets back again
in its wake only one verb can be heard
out of the rumbling of engines out of the screeching
of wheels out of sirens and bells while above
out of alveoli out of blue foliage
silence
everything becomes a combination between zero and one
on the fuming shards of the vulcanite birds
looming motionless and huge against the blue forest sky
there dances Varujan Vosganian the mad guy …
snowing
I’m aware that someone has died
for the air is lighter by one breath
and also that someone has knocked at my door
at all the doors of the world simultaneously
then he has sadly and slowly departed
landscape: with your head tilted on one side
you loosened your hair and passed your comb through it
on the other side the city had settled herself
on that shoulder of yours with no collarbone the feline one
a huge frozen eye whose iris was black was snowing-weeping
from above
over a field of irises that had sprung in between objects
passing from your self-centered being into one with a purpose
since I happened to be close by I kissed you on your lips
embodying our own selves from the great playful one
someone had died he knocked at the door
the door panels opened outside the night was booming
then we disentangled from each other and bowed to the public
song before sunrise
on the silver platter with its lacustrine glinting
the head of St. John the Baptist
was a white water lily
his mouth was still working in the path of the wind
like a conch held for quite a while to the ear
the gore oozed like a resin and it seemed
sweet to us it was thus that morning
a lass with long tresses broke out
trailing her gastropod gown over things
all the while on the brink of smiling or crying
with whatever part of her body
thus she descended carrying high the silver platter
with its gory rim – upon which his temples
and soft bones kept munching with no avail
a chunk of bread
a kind of lacrima mundi
rainmaker
I know why you are looking at me like that –
all around here mist is tinfoil thin
the walls are cracked your lips are cracked with silence
night is shivering in pain with her knees locked tight
like after rape
the lights of the city are dry and the wind
rustles through them as through the leaves in autumn
birds are burning in the heated air my gait
is aflame and each thought
an electric discharge lighting the steps of the karma
with my cheek against the grass I feel the body of the plain
like a loaf of bread yielding its moisture when broken in twain
my heart lies on one side its beating on the other
rejoice therefore and dance for soon
above me rain will start falling
my ghost will shortly be leaving the city afloat
above the plain and you
will follow me with moistened eyelids during such times
of drought for one tear one spills the same amount of blood
as for a century-long war song of myself
I’m listening to a lullaby
its words are mild magnetic fields
along them the city is slowly rocking herself
at its core I keep still
some say it’s a rite of passage toward death
but they add: in the growing evening
only the shadow can’t turn darker
over its mists any question
is an euglena that brings forth the world
I listen but the lullaby can no longer be heard
everything takes place on the retina so that
silence prevails
I place my left palm under the gramophone’s needle
a hoarse voice is recounting the story of my life to me
THE BLUE SHAMAN – Selections
Translated from the Romanian by Heathrow O’Hare
