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