Amor Fati ( Nietzsche)

It is not a place of peace

A tent of shade or a palace

Lotus flowers do not float there

In ponds silent or lost

I have not chosen

Nor was I chosen to be

Chance, perhaps, or coincidence

Have found me searching for me

It is not because of love

That I have loved those I once met

On serpentine roads or in cities of stone

It is because I just was there

One gets one chance

Given by chance

To pass through

And be curious about the passing

... It is not a place of peace

Nor a tent or a palace

But it is fate

Dressed as life

August 24, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017

One Hand isn’t Enough to Write With (Abdellatif Laâbi)

But to invite

It still takes one

To touch another hand

Under an unmoon night

Or in the heat of the desert

To reach for the clouds

It takes the most beautiful

Of all births:

That of an idea

To hold

In the palm

Of that
One hand

To reach inside the caverns of

Oneself

It takes one hand, made into a fist

To hold the sternum

Before all pain

Is shared

Yes, it still takes one hand

To wave goodbye

At a train station

… And, it takes that same hand

To keep waving till the train becomes night

And

To come down

To your face

And hold the tears

For the next train

The next star

And the next invite

August 10, 2017

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017

I borrowed the title of my poem from Abdellatif Laâbi, a Moroccan poet. His original poem was written in French entitled “Une seule main ne suffit pas pour écrire”

I took the above photograph in Morocco.

The Wolf We Feed

Two wolves

Unrelated to any forest

Found their respite

In a wondering soul

One ate only when hungry

The other hunted even when full

Yet they slept touching their tails

With their face, at sunrise

Two wolves

Made the welcoming soul

Their forest

Without wondering why

One listened to the echo

Deep into the scorched forest

That once was a soul

Where poetry had its own corner

The other hunted every line

Every stanza

Of any poem left

And made the echo vaster

.. And in the shade of a final word

Two wolves, curled at sunrise

Touching their tails

For comfort

July 11, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017

Inspired by a Cherokee story about each human harboring two wolves in them. One kind, one not. The wisdom of it is that the wolf that survives is the one we feed. 

I Do Not Live: I Burn (Peyo Yavorov)

There is no baptism

But there is fire and people leaving

Without having time

To search

For their Sunday cloth

Deer, rabbit and eagle

Wonder in the deep smoke

And hummingbirds hover above

What were gift, nectar and morning dew

A few days ago

Ashes find their way

To every soul and every meadow

To tell the story of what was all bloom

The story of what will bloom again

Ashes get also lost

In the winds that throw us around

Shore to shore

Valley to valley

Memory to lament

But when rain comes

Fires go dormant

And ashes turn to promise

For the soul of what remains

And the gift of all that burned:

Healing

July 3, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017

PS/ It is the season of destructive forest fires in the U.S Southwest. As I smell the smoke from thousands of burning acres of trees and grass, I recalled a poem by Bulgarian poet Peyo Yavorov called “Two Souls”

Crow Feather on My Path

Pain defines itself

Like a crow that drops a feather

And never looks back

Pain defines itself

Without excuse, without regret

A tender whisper

At sunrise

Defines itself on your pillow

As part of you

For you

Yet a whisper in never loud

Even when allowed

There is little joy

When you find the black feather

Upon your path

At sunset or at high noon

And put it in your bag

In fear that it can fly

By itself

A name you still remember

Defines itself

As that part of you

You lost, near a vast sea

Or to forget pain

... And you want to remember

But you now have that black feather

A crow dropped upon your path

So you sharpen its tip

And you dip that feather

Into the night-dark ink

Of your memories

And give the name you once forgot

A new name

To define itself

June 28, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017

The Danube Just Flowed On (József Attila)

Half a face

Yet two eyes

To see what others will wonder

As if new

A heart where no secrets

Talk to each other

And on August nights

Float as Jasmine blossom in a clay pot

Hands aging and slow

Yet they have left no scars

For what they touched was touched before

And what they held was already gone

The rivers have passed

And their waters have kept

Little

June 17, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017

I was reading poems by József Attila translated from Hungarian. The mood in many of his lines reminded me of a photo I took from the castle of Buda. It was a foggy and cold day, the historic palace of Pest was in a dream, and the Danube “just flowed on.”

While I Was Not Looking

It was discomfort

As beauty found my word

And forgot to end it

With a point

Instead

A life was made of it

That word

That name

As if a holiday gift

Left wrapped in its own ribbon

It was discomfort then

But now

As days get numbered

Like the gallop

Of an aging race horse

My word writes itself

At the start of every

Ending point

… The passage of beauty

And the shadow it left behind

Remain my cherished gifts

Even if

I have never untied

The yellow ribbon

June 10, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017