When Wounds Close But Do Not Heal

 

 

Like the aroma

In a room where many

Had cried through

Their open wounds

And wiped their fears

With scar tissue

 

When summer rain

Came through open

Wooden windows

And filled that space

 

With past names

 

And they walked along

In silent steps

In cities of concrete

And on paths of journeys

 

Taken only for the joy

Of the journey 

 

Like stony walls

That did not stop the mist

To become cloud again

To become shade

 

Or just become 

 

Places where journeys found you

As you always were

Places where regret 

Lost its whisper

 

And

For the space

Of a secret moment

Forgot

 

The tears others cried

Through their closed wounds

In rooms burned like incense

Before the summer showers

 

At noon

 

January 31, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

 

About this poem

The inspiration for this poem came with the first snow of 2025. It is a magical moment for my senses when the desert gets its white cover and the humidity fills the space with incense aroma from the Juniper trees and the various shrubs. I often think of sandalwood, cedar and myrrh after the first rain or snow in Arizona.

Unexpectedly, I recalled a poem by Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) “Chanson D’automne” that was among dozens we had to learn and recite in secondary school.  Many a time it was a punishment for misbehaviour in class – we had to learn a poem, stand up in front of classmates, and recite. Today, I am grateful for the many naughty behaviours I was known for in secondary school.

I had not thought about this romantic and melancholic classic poem for decades, but with some hesitation and searching my memory for the lines, my brain found them safely tucked away in my nostalgia files.  And I recited it, again, while filling my moment with the aroma from the wet desert.

Chanson d’automne

 

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon cœur
D’une langueur
Monotone.

Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l’heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure;

Et je m’en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m’emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.

 

 

Why did I remember this poem?  Perhaps as Blaise Pascal wrote “Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ignore » (the heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing about) proposing that logic alone cannot explain the matters of the heart. And, while I once thought “Automne” was about the season, now I realise it is also the season of life when youth remains a rite of passage in spring and summer.

Then, I search for a translation and found this lovely site:

https://strommeninc.com/french-poems-10-most-famous/

 

Autumn Song

 

When a sighing begins
In the violins
Of the autumn-song,
My heart is drowned
In the slow sound
Languorous and long

Pale as with pain,
Breath fails me when
The hours toll deep.
My thoughts recover
The days that are over,
And I weep.

And I go
Where the winds know,
Broken and brief,
To and fro,
As the winds blow
A dead leaf.

translated by Arthur Symons

 

Mano a Mano with Mother Time

A couple of days ago I got news from France that a friend I have known since the mid-1970s, had passed.

We last met in Paris. After a short walk, we sat at his favorite café trottoir on the 6^ème, “Les Deux Magots”, for a beer.

He took out what looked like a tree branch from his side bag, and filled it with tobacco.

“It is a pipe from the 1940s” he said. “Made in Vienna from Austrian cherry wood. They call it “Weichsel”. Tobacco tastes better when burning in a cherry wood pipe from the shores of the Danube.”

To my surprised look, he added “It is like the antique cameras you use – its part of history you hold in your hands.”

“Talking about history” I replied, “it has been 35 years since we played soccer near the Mediterranean sea. And we still enjoy being different!”

He puffed on his pipe and said:

“Yes, we have always enjoyed being different. And we took many a journey just to prove that we are explorers of sorts, just for the joy of the journey, no?”

“Yes, but  sometimes these journeys took us to unexpected endings.”

“Sure” he whispered with the huge pipe in his jaw. “Yet, we took the journeys without worrying about expectations or outcomes. We did it just to enjoy the journey.”

“Do you still do that?” I inquired.

He was pensive for a moment and his face veiled by the tobacco smoke.

“I think we now have one more journey, but this time the outcome is known” he proposed.

“Yes?”

“It has always been mano a mano, my friend. Sometimes we got a second chance and we continued. We always did! But now, we are faced with a fight where there are no second chances, and the outcome is known. It is the mano a mano with Mother Time. You know she will win, but we cannot give up the fight. Perhaps because the journey is still what boils our blood.”

 

… This morning I recalled that last meeting although I could not recall the year. But I remembered that I took a few photos during our walk. And that his Austrian cherry wood pipe attracted many looks by patrons of the café trottoir.

Then, realising how futile his statement “we always did” sounded now, I thought about a poem Pablo Neruda wrote in 1955, that seemed to address the issues of personal history, time and the hope for second chances.

Here is the poem in Spanish titled “Siempre”

Antes de mí
no tengo celos.

Ven con un hombre
a la espalda,
ven con cien hombres en tu cabellera,
ven con mil hombres entre tu pecho y tus pies,
ven como un río
lleno de ahogados
que encuentra el mar furioso,
la espuma eterna, el tiempo!

Tráelos todos
adonde yo te espero:
siempre estaremos solos,
siempre estaremos tú y yo
solos sobre la tierra,
para comenzar la vida!

 

And a translation by Brian Cole (https://allpoetry.com/poem/8496855-Always-by-Pablo-Neruda)

 

 

Always

I am not jealous
of what came before me.

Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
which flows down to the wild sea,
to the eternal surf, to Time!

Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth,
to start our life!

 

And we never refused to ride that surf, no matter how rough were the seas.

January 24, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

 

PS/ I went searching for those photos I took that day with my “antique” Mamiya 645 1000. I had scanned a couple of them. The one I chose to include suddenly had a new meaning – reminded of my friend, his journeys, and his final surf. And, now I know that our last meeting was in 2009.

She Wore a Ring on Her Thumb

 

The sea was lifted

By distant waves

Remembering the shores

From where they left 

 

And the wind carried

Old promises

 

Mossy rocks were inviting

For bare feet to play

With other bare feet

In await for low tide

 

And the wind carried

Old voices

 

  

January 6, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

Non Mutuus Amor Mirabilis

 

The first weekend of 2025, and I went back to my routine of reading poetry. This time it was about introspection, without melancholy.  It seemed a natural moment to have with change. With the unknown.

Poetry that fits such a state of soul knows no culture, language, or inheritance. It is panhuman. So, I first read a sonnet by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, a representative of Spanish Romanticism circa 1890s, entitled “Rima XI”. I have read this poem before as it reminded me of the Armenian poet Mateos Zarifian, who, victim of tuberculosis during the early 1900s, rejected all those who loved him. As such, although he did not reciprocate, his poems are all about love, destiny, and longing.

Zarifian’s poetry influenced my teenage years, and intermittently, my adult life. Interestingly, the compendium of his poems, a book published in 1957, is still with me, tortured aver the decades of my vagabondage around the globe.

So, I opened that book, put it next to Bécquer’s sonnet, and read about unrequited love, in Spanish and in Armenian.

“Rima XI” is about a woman rejecting on non-reciprocating Bécquer’s love. The last stanza of the sonnet reads:

Yo soy un sueño, un imposible,
vano fantasma de niebla y luz;
soy incorpórea, soy intangible:
no puedo amarte.
—¡Oh ven, ven tú!

Translated as

I am a dream, an impossibility,

a fleeting phantom of mist and light;

I am incorporeal, intangible:

I cannot love you.

—Oh, come, come then!

 

In this case, it is only when the poet admits that he cannot love her, that the woman agrees that he is the one for her.  In Zarufian’s poems, it is he who rejects the love of women in fear that his deteriorating health would be unfair to any relationship. But his longing never stops or ends.

… And that was my first moment of introspection for 2025. Without melancholy. Without longing. Just a moment of inspection and perhaps introspection. In an interesting way, I found myself not thinking in Armenian, not reading in Spanish, and not writing in English. I was listening to another language. One with no alphabet, and no sound. A language of “mist and light” as Bécquer described it. And it was harmonious and soothing.

“Love takes only from itself; love gives only from itself” as K. Gibran said.  And I thought of it as a marvelous existence.

 

January 4, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

“Your Time is Limited; Don’t Waste it Living Someone Else’s Life” Steve Jobs

 

 

 

I often meet new people because of my dog. It did not used to be the case with my previous 4 dogs as they did look and behave like many of their other canine brethren. This one stands out with his size and the mellowness he has acquired with age. He pulls me like a reindeer to say hello to those who sit on the square benches, or to the homeless folks bundled up in the street during our walks before sunrise.

A few days ago, he got interested by the smell of a cigar a man was smoking in the cold of a December early morning. He smiled and said:

“I once had an Akita. May I pet him?”

Before I could respond, Ziggy was licking his hand and sniffing the cigar smoke around him.

So, we talked a little. I could immediately tell that he was very well educated, and well kept for someone who has been sleeping in the street and waiting for the soup kitchen to open. He was of Asian heritage, wearing rimless glasses and wearing a thick wool coat. Next to him was his wheeled suitcase.

“I am the only one who smokes a cigar,” he said looking to the few other men bundled up next to the soup kitchen door.  “Everyone else rolls their cigarettes.”

By then he was hugging all 130 pounds of Ziggy as one would do to a blanket on a cold morning.

“I miss my dog. Well, I miss a lot of things.” he whispered while keeping his cigar away from my furry friend’s face.

Of course I sat down next to him, curious.

“You may wonder about my being here, no?” he asked.

“I am,” I said.

“Well, it is the old story, nothing particularly worth talking about. I was on the other side of midnight once. Then things went wrong. So, I am learning about a new life, one that I used to only read about. Perhaps even teach.”

We were silent for a while, as he kept scratching behind Ziggy’s ears.

Then he turned to me:

“But I am at peace that I did not forget who I was and refused to find comfort in what others expected me to be. I learned that to be the most important decision.”

The enigmatic one-way conversation had captivated me.

“This is the only cigar I have for the day, so excuse me that I make the most of it. Ziggy wants to go on his walk and you have no choice than to hold his leash. It was good he kept me company for a short while.”

He kissed Ziggy on the nose, and turned his head away.

I got up and let Ziggy decide which dark alley of the town he wanted to explore on that cold and dark morning.

PS/ The encounter reminded me of a similar one and of the brief conversation I had years ago in Baltimore, Maryland while walking my last dog Rocky. The man accepted that I take a photo, but I did not print it to respect his privacy. Instead, I scanned the medium format frame which made the capture of the moment appropriately more ethereal.

 

December 21, 2024

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2024

L'Amore Domina Senza Regole (Love Exists Without Rules)

 

 

It is Thanksgiving Day and I am thinking about seasonality. I often do, when my dog takes me for long walks before sunrise. We walk through the desert heat; we shiver with the first freeze; and, we tell ourselves that sunrise is in a couple of hours. At least I do. For him, it is the daily gratitude of being able to walk long miles and have me at the end of the leash.

It is that gratitude that I have cherished in dogs, and learned from, over the past 45 years, as I have never been without a canine friend during that period of time. And, we have probably walked enough miles to circle the earth more than once. There are few rules during these walks – in fact just one: I follow my dogs. That is what a long leash allows – there is always one who leads and one who follows.

… I grew up learning how seasons dictate what we eat, what we celebrate and what we cherish in those changes. The food on our table was always fresh, never from seasons past kept in await in a freezer or a tin can. We ate lamb only in the spring, beans and tomatoes in the summer, and fish when small fishing boats were able to get out to sea and upon return, sell the fish on the beach. It was glorious simplicity around the Mediterranean when garlic fried in olive oil always made our house a home. And as I grew older, I listened to the advice of accepting my own changes of season, the discoveries they bring, and the limitations they impose on what to expect and do.

It was never a feeling of being cheated; of being restricted or regretful. Perhaps life can be untasty if it were kept in a freezer or a tin can. It had to be lived and celebrated with the moment, in the moment, but only with love. Even in the most difficult times. Even when one feels that there is no sunrise by the end of a long walk, at the end of a leash.

Because there is.

… It is Thanksgiving Day and tables will be full for the lucky ones who can fill their tables. And I thought about our dining room table when I was a kid as I have kept a picture my father took during a holiday more than 60 years ago when my sister and I were about to start lunch under the watchful eye of our mother. Our dining table was simple, but there was plenty of sunshine bathing the room. And always a bottle of red wine for my father to toast in gratitude. Those lunches tasted better than any I have had in restaurants or prepared by street vendor on four continents. And we gave thanks to our mother before every meal. And after.

It is a photo I revisit when I think about what makes a house (in our case growing up, an apartment) a home. The answer is universal and simple – love of the moment. And we felt fulfilled.

And I recited a line from K. Gibran that has stayed with me as I circled and lived around the globe for the past 50 years:

                             “Love has no desire than to fulfill itself”

 

November 28, 2024

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2024

El Dolor es Una Maravillosa Cerradura /Pain is a Marvelous Deadbolt (Blanca Varela, Peruvian Poet)

 

 

And you shut it tight with a smile. All that remains is the illusion of being complete, piece by piece. Of being attainable.

With time, those pieces become warped and do not fit together again. But you do not un-shut the deadbolt. Rather, you find new pieces to fill the gaps. The cracks. So tight, that no light is seen through.

You fill your red wine glass with white wine. Without regrets. And for all the sunsets you missed, you raise that glass to a name you never met. To the memories of all those without names.

Of that deadbolt you speak rarely. Sometimes you only think about the door it holds tight. The one that was repaired with new parts. The one that does not let light pass through.

And then, one sunrise, you wash your red wine glass with a promise, wipe it dry with scar tissue, and fill it with cold coffee left from a previous sunrise.

And you walk pass the door, the deadbolt still on it. The coffee tastes like the first coffee you brewed in an old land. Or perhaps like the second one. But the wine glass warms your hands.

You are not attainable at that moment. Because it belongs only to you.

And at sunrise, you go to the seaside of a city of steel and concrete, and feed your inner Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

 

November 14, 2024

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2024