Of Siren Eyes, Old Women and the Sea

 

“Women in your paintings have siren eyes” a visitor to my gallery told me. “That is all one sees on their faces.”

“I cannot hear their song without seeing their eyes” I replied.

… I was thinking about that conversation this morning, and I thought about the poem by Canadian poet Margaret Atwood titled “Siren Song” inspired by the Greek mythology of the voyages of Odysseus, but addressing the experiences of all humans through their travel through life.

The lines from that poem that remain in those after their first reading of Atwood’s almost spiritual analysis of a facet in human interactions are:

This is the one song everyone

would like to learn: the song

that is irresistible:

 

the song that forces men

to leap overboard in squadrons

even though they see the beached skulls

 

the song nobody knows

because anyone who has heard it

is dead, and the others can't remember.

 

 

I stopped to think about the last two lines, as mythology and my life experience crossed the space where time had taken respite and made room to remembrance.

Do I paint siren eyes to remember or to forget?

 

Perhaps the answer is in the lines of Pablo Neruda’s of “The Old Women of the Ocean”:

They sit down alone on the shore
Without moving their eyes or their hands
Without changing the clouds or the silence

… Now they have the ocean
The cold and burning emptiness
The solitude full of flames.

 

PS/ The photo atop the page is from the 1979 with a Minolta Mark II camera that used 110 film.

The photo of the fisherman’s wife selling sardines on the beach is from Nazaré, Portugal., taken with a Nikon F2.

March 22, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

The River Can Not Go Back – Khalil Gibran

 

 

It is snowing in the desert, favorite few short days of the year when my dog and I take the first walk of the morning in snow untouched by human feet, although there will be many imprints from the passage of rabbits and coyotes. But more than the desert snow, I inhale deep the new scents juniper trees and various bushes let escape with the moisture. And I follow the patchouli and sandalwood invitation like a young man would follow after the New Year’s dance.

Then, and often inspired by the aquatic transformation of the desert, upon return, I pick up a book. And my dog sleeps at the bottom of my couch.

 I have often written ⁽¹⁾ about how the desert changes under snow and rain. I find it wonderful that a vast and at first look uneventful space has been home to so many sensations, a way of life to so many cultures, and an invitations for our inner rivers to find their way.

 

This morning, I thought of a poem by Khalil Gibran titled “The River Cannot Go Back”. It is not written in the usual Gibranesque style, but the philosophy found in “The Prophet” is there.

 

Here is the poem:

 

It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.

 

The message is philosophical, didactic, and inspirational with a touch of fatalism. Yet, as I reread this poem at various stages of my life, the meaning seems to change when I ponder about the relationship of rivers and seas as a metaphor. I have lived in more than a desert around the globe; I was born on the shores of the bluest sea, and have fly casted for trout in many rivers and streams. In every instance, I have found a philosophy of existence and an identity that has influenced my personal outlook to an order of harmony associated with the journey through the environments and moments, rather than their transformation into a destination.

Interestingly, while rivers do not originate from bodies of seas, the concept of a river flowing into the sea always seemed to suggest a return of sort, of becoming one with the sea, or even changing its identity by becoming the sea itself.

And that realisation brought back a few lines from Joachim Du Bellay, a 16^th century French Renaissance poet and the sonnet XXX1 published in 1558 which is still taught in schools although it was written in Middle French and titled “Heureux qui comme Ulysse”.

This is one of the poems I had learned in secondary school. I could recall only the first stanza, perhaps because it had influenced me most – the finding of what matters most after learning from any long voyage.

Here is the first stanza:

Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage,
Ou comme cestuy-là qui conquit la toison,
Et puis est retourné, plein d’usage et raison,
Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son âge!

(Happy he who like Ulysses has returned successful from his travels,
or like he who sought the Golden Fleece,
Then returned, wise to the world
Live amongst his family to the end of his days!)

 

When I first learned the lines of this poem, “Parents” meant what it would mean to a young reader – mother, father, family. But today, re-reading Gibran and counting the years since I was in secondary school, I wondered if the sea was the parent to the river. After all, the long voyage of days often makes us become our parents ⁽²⁾.

But, when our inner rivers get re-routed through of voyage of days, do we become what we always were? Do we find ourselves after trying to be what we were expected to be? Even when the river flows into the sea, can its waters still keep their “riverness” even if the dream of every sea has always been in those rivers’ riverbed?

I believe that every sea and ocean harbor the dream of, at least once, experiencing what rivers and stream feel in spring when the snow melts on the mountains and rushes down to fill those lesser bodies of water with the joy of rejuvenation and promise.

… It is snowing outside. The bird feeder, lonesome and cold, awaits for spring to welcome birds of all feather and their song.

And my dog patiently snores next to my couch.

 

March 8, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

 

(1)   https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2021/03/saint-exupery-shakespeare-and-armenian.html

 (2)   https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2024/01/jamais-vu-when-familiar-becomes-unknown.html

(3)   https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2013/11/boussole.html

Of Balconies and Bridges

 

 

Under an unmoon sky

When the nightingale

Forgot the last word

Of its song

 

I tried to inspire my pen

And write the unspoken

Word as a song

 

And yet

When one forgets 

How to end a song

Under an unmoon sky

 

It is because

Of a name, short as a word

Lonely as a night blooming

Jasmine

 

That folds its

Petals

At

Sunrise

 

 

March 1, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025

 

 

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 through 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