Poison Sumac and Green Thyme

She was neither elegant nor intuitive

She was a circle where all points of experience

Found their desire.

Loneliness was a respite in that circle

When she looked inward to find autumn, evil and the aroma

Of fresh cut thyme, coriander and an oven

She had not fired since she went inward

And he was not there.

Her face was neither wrinkled nor was it to remember

It was what faced the days without expecting

A change.

Loneliness then was the mending of that circle

Where she once lost her pace

When the boat left the small island

For terra firma.  Before the storm.

This evening

Her name whispers through the stones

Left to cool after the fire is ash to touch

Is ash to the recall that once it was fire

And experience along the circle where she found

Her desires.

Now it is all echoes, vast empty space

Where once his brown eyes

Whispered her name

In a new language

February 23, 2019

Gloomy Sunday (László Jávor)

I like to read poetry on weekends. Today I picked up a collection of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem published somewhere around 1860s. It is one of the collectible books I inherited from my father. Many are Armenian and French books, but some are Arabic, Farsi and from the Ottoman Empire days. I can read all of them except the ones in Farsi, although I enjoy holding them as one would hold a past with fear and wonder.

Here is the book. Not sure the exact date of print but somewhere around 1861. Alfred Tennyson was a British poet. He was the Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign.

and

So, “I am part of all that I have met”. That surely includes people, places, and even events. From the poems of Lamartine, to the Sufi hopefulness of Hafiz and Rumi, I met this gentleman yesterday walking his dog who told me that “there are no bad dogs, just bad dog owners.”

… A line stood out as I was leafing through the age-delicate pages of Tennyson’s book:

           “Sweet is true love that is given in vain, and sweet is death that takes away pain”

I stopped. I had heard these words before. At least the feeling of this sentence was not new. Yes, it was in the poem written by László Jávor, a Hungarian poet who wrote the poem that was the basis for a historic song composed by Rezső Seress in the 1930s. This song, titled “Gloomy Sunday” is also known as the Hungarian Suicide Song, at is blamed for being connected to more suicides than any other song in history. In fact the BBC banned airing the song for 66 years, and resumed in 2002.

The lyrics and melody of "Gloomy Sunday" made it a jazz standard, and Billie Holiday recorded it for posterity.

I have listened to this song hundreds of times. In Hungarian, English and even in Japanese. It has a way of dominating your inner space. And I assume when the times were difficult, like in the 1930s in Hungary under Nazi dominance, that inner space looks for disappearance. So, a suicide song perhaps, but mainly when placed within a morose and desperate environment.

The last time I heard this song was by Lucia Jiménez for the Kovak Box (2010) movie. Strangely, I found her interpretation more romantic then morbid. Perhaps because I am now old and I have passed thru a few gloomy Sundays already….

And, seeing and hearing Jiménez on Youtube brought together poetry, history and mythology to my mind. I could not resist thinking about Sylphs as they were named by the Rosicrucian's and Cabalists. The sylph (or sylphide) is an aerial female spirit, invisible yet almost identifiable whose voices could be heard in the wind and fill the souls predisposed to hearing them.

… “I am part of all that I have met”. I am hopeful as gloomy Sundays have come and gone. I have learned to let lonely sylphides fill my soul with every shallow breath I have taken to not clip the wings of these sylphs; and the sweetness of true love when given in vain is something I have volunteered to let happen.

Eventually, I am not only “part” of all that I have met, but I AM what and who I have met. I am the people, the places, the gloomy Sundays and love poems I read.

In other words, I am very lucky.

February 10, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Blurred Vision

It is upon revisiting

That we forget what we left behind

For brown eyes are too deep to drown

All the names we keep in the mist of time

It is upon the blue smoke

Of the morning’s first deep inhale

That we recall that shiver we once had

When sunrise followed a moonless night

It is upon unwashed pillows

That we still drop our tears in vain

For old dreams find their calm and space

In beds under open windows at noon

It is upon the fear of time

That we pass quiet and look for signs

Of places, names, and sad brown eyes

Where oceans have drowned and moons washed

On an August night

February 7, 2019

Night Train to Lisbon (or the Air Left behind the Curtains)

It is a cold and windy day. The rain is so intense that I cannot see the mountains anymore.

My old dog seems to have emphysema. He walks little, stops every 10 meters and gasps for air. After all he is more than 100 years old, in human years. These days he reminds me of a famous Jacques Brel song lyrics “Les Vieux” (The Old Ones) where he describes the decrease of mobility among the old as “… from the bed to the window/ then from the bed to the bed”,

Yes, my old dog is now in the “du lit au lit” phase of life.

He did not want to go out today. So, I turned the gas fireplace one and he curled in front of it. I made strong coffee and sat in front of the fireplace checking what is on TV. Interestingly, the movie that was about to start was based on a book I had read “Night Train to Lisbon”.

… I traveled our globe almost non-stop from 1978 to 2010. Mostly for professional reasons, I found the opportunity unique to meet people and discover that we all have the same fears and that it is the daily simplicity that fills us with calm. It is indeed that simplicity that we remember about these days.

I have a very few places, if chance wants me to revisit, that I would love to do so. Among these few are Portugal and her people. I was born on the Mediterranean and Portugal is not even close to that bluest sea. But its people, especially in the south, look like the people I grew up with. More, they think, they express, they love, and they let you go just like the people I grew up with.

… So, with the winds gusting at 40 miles an hour and lashing bands of rain against the house; my dog breathing heavy in front of the fireplace; and now my mind revisiting the streets of Lisbon and Oporto, I decided to watch the movie.

I read the book more than a decade ago because of its popularity and because it dealt with philosophy, Portugal and poetry. There are memorable lines by the author Pascal Mercier, mostly attributed to the central character of the novel, Amadeu de Prado, a Portuguese doctor, during António de Oliveira Salazar's dictatorship in Portugal. The one that I have found most eloquent, pan-human and unavoidably haunting is:

“We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place. We stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there. We travel to ourselves when we go to a place. “

For a chronic traveler like me, these lines sounded like the truth we discover in train stations, on balconies or smoke filled cafés on the Iberian Peninsula and beyond. These lines always reminded me of houses when I was growing up. There seemed “ancient air” kept behind the heavy curtains, and when the windows are cracked open that air filled with memories of each room comes out to caress our memory.

Like that air, we indeed stay in places we have left.

… The visual power of the movie was delightful. The camera traveled the streets of Lisboa as I often did. The graffiti, the cafés, the cobble stone narrow streets, and the unhurried people took me back more than once in the 90 minutes I remained glued to the TV, having my dog’s snoring cadence and the rain salvos on the windows as background.

There is a scene that was also most delightful when Stefania and Amadeu escape to Spain and in the car parked at the cliff over the ocean Amadeu says:

          “..We will invent a language only you and I understand”

But Stefania says

          “I cannot do it. You are asking from me more than I can ever give.”

Amazing! That immediately reminded me (again!) of Jacques Brel and his most famous poem/song “Ne me Quitte Pas” (Do Not Leave Me):

Do not leave me

I will invent for you

Words of fools

That you would understand

… It is still raining. The movie is over and I had to write my first impressions.

PS/ The photo is of a Fado singer in Lisbon. I took it in practical darkness with a 1950s Leica III camera and ASA 60 film.

February 4, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019