.. Di Questo Fondo Non Torno Vivo Alcun, S’I’odo il Vero Senza Tema D’infamia Ti Rispondo (from Dante’s Infreno)

It was a simple time. All lines were either straight or slightly bending. No mystery, and no repetition. Everything was “a first time”.

All lines were clear. Braque or Picasso stayed in their cubes. Rubik forgot the twists to align his cube’s faces. All faces were in line these days.

“Loneliness is when solitude stops populating your space” I was told. You have to listen like an ear listens to its earring. Like Spanish Cava masquerades French bubbles. Like when it is suddenly morning again.

Like it is now as it was then. When the Danube was never blue but walking it in Budapest or Vienna was best for loudly reciting Armenian poetry to those who did not understand Armenian. Or walking over that river, alone, to Petrzalka on a windy night.

All lines were either straight or bending just slightly.

Yet, we returned alive from these depths to where lines had become maze, and reality a title for a poetry book.  Dante descended to where many of us ascended near the Danube or the Caspian Sea. And we repeated, often unknowingly Dante’s lines:

               “If what I hear is true, without fear or infamy, I answer thee”

For in those depths all we found was soothing solitude we all eventually ascend to. There was no loneliness as the lines were straight. And, if they bent slightly before a new day arrived, without fear or infamy, we always had the same answer.

And the answer was a promise.

October 27, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019