Brugge

I put my brush in paint

Did not mix colors, just the sound

Of the midnight train

In Bruges

Vapors were like smoke

Yet upon the timid canvas

All looked like snowfall

At midnight in August

Trains are for goodbye

A color I cannot mix

Like the sound a waving hand

Cannot stop making

And it all becomes one

A night away from a new day

When others will ride the train

And hope the journey cannot end

… But trains are for goodbye

March 20, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017

Healing Wounds: How My Hand Reached to Lake Sevan

Two days ago, I burned my hand taking a pot out of the oven.  The blister drained and I kept it under a small bandage. This morning, as I was changing the bandage, my mind played a strange game:

Atop my hand, instead of the burn wound, I saw the contour of Lake Sevan!

With the correction of a mirror image resemblance, here is an aerial view of the lake by Google:

…And I thought about healing wounds. About wounds that have not yet healed. And I thought about my trip to Lake Sevan in 1988 during the earthquake of Spitak in northern Armenia. It was November and the shores of Lake Sevan were while in snow.

I have not seen Lake Sevan when it is blue and calm. They say it is often blue but never calm. Perhaps Ivan Aivazovsky best captured the tumult of Lake Sevan in his paintings.

…So, I starred at my miniscule wound for a while letting my mind dream and mourn. Indeed, of the three jewels of historic Armenia’s lakes, only Lake Sevan is now within the Armenian territory. Lake Van and Urmia are in Turkey as testimony of the cruel history of the early 1900s.

And I thought of these lakes as open wounds. Wounds in which poets have looked to find themselves. And suddenly, after more than 50 years of hibernation, lines from a beloved Armenian poet, Bedros Tourian, came to my lips. The poem is entitled “The Lake” in which the poet looks into the waters of Lake Sevan and ends in an introspection of his own soul. And I recited a few lines of the poem while putting a new bandage upon “my lake”.

.. My wound is less than 2 cm and will heal soon. Lake Sevan covers almost 1,250 square kilometers. 

Such large wounds do not heal.

March 16, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017

The Inferior Truth

Intimacy is a refuge

To where you invite

All those you once knew

And leave yourself out

Intimacy is the knot

You untie alone

Then in a moment of fear

Throw the pieces to those

Who you once knew

But left you because

You were too much alike

Intimacy is the truth

Where you cannot play that role

Play that game

Or play alone

But only with those whom you

Once knew

And on an August day

Left you

Intimacy is a common shame

Where all secrets fly as kites

Where all whispers are loud and bright

Among those

Whom you once knew

And then, under an unmoon night

Left you be

Who you once were

Before you met them

February 27, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017

Simplicity

Is

Unassuming

Like lamprey and rice

In Porto

Evasive

As if sea cucumber

Held by chopsticks

In Tainan

Unexpected

Like pigeon pie

In Edinburgh

Predictable

(Always was)

Boiled beef in bone marrow broth

In Vienna

Unforgettable

Street baked sea ray  

Wrapped in banana leaf

In Singapore

Delightful

Like lamb wrapped in wine leaves

In Aleppo

Truffly

As they like pasta

In Ferrara

Over-acclaimed

Like every dish

In Paris

Bomba rice and shrimp

For the best paella

In Valencia

Green or red

As I always remembered

The curry dish

Cooked in Mumbai

… While I have been

To every continent

And tried every dish

For my day

To end with love

Bread, cheese and wine

Remain
Simply

The best

February 16, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017

Fugacious Echo

It was a leaf that fell

Because it had missed winter

It is lonely to be

The last dry leaf on a tree

     It was a raindrop that fell

     After all snow became river

     A drop of rain to the river

     Is just snow born again

          It was a goodbye I watched

          Before the storm angered the sea

          A name I kept unwhispered and shy

               For the leaf had fallen

               And the raindrop had become sea

January 21, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017

Wheelchair Blues

It was a passing look
But a broken heart
Cannot stay in pieces for long
So I looked back
Like I once had
Just to remember

Her hands were nervous
And her body nearly silent
Yet she looked at me
Liked I once had
Just to discover

She was still a child
In a wheelchair where
Sunset years find their secret calm
And the injured timely respite

She was still a child
And her wheelchair was now part
Of her body nearly silent
As if to let her be her own space
Where once I found myself
And shared it too

It was a passing look
But I stayed for a while
I had a story to tell
Like I had told it once
When her body was silent
And her smile had relaxed

My broken heart had stayed
Broken for the space secretly
Kept empty in await for
A new look, but as simple
As the one I had seen once
When I was not ready

To discover
To find myself
Or for one day
To remember

November 19, 2016
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016


On the plane to Europe during the Thanksgiving holidays, memories of our daughter still haunted me for the entire trans-Atlantic passage. Eleven years since her death and the emptiness she left has been filled only by my memories of her.

And the Rainbow Cut the Sky in Half

When two lonesome souls
Find each other’s path
They secretly blossom
Into a vast loneliness

          And there is dust there
          To make tired eyes dry
          And there is a song there
          To fill dark nights in promise

                    Armenian hands leave no scars
                    But cannot heal old wounds
                    For there is a song there
                    That makes dry eyes wet

                              …When two lonesome souls
                                  Walk their separate paths
                                  They leave no trace
                                  Just the promise to walk alone

November 12, 2016
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016

I first saw Leonard Cohen on stage in Montréal, in 1976. And last time in Maryland, in 2010.