The light was timid
As it kept its promise
To shadows and shade
On narrow spaces
On faces hiding
Joy and impatience
The light was evasive
In the rush of cruel cities
Where identity
Lost its name
And became
Just a refrain
The light was never warm
But to hands cold of await
Became that promise
Dressed in quiet shadows
Like a gypsy dancer
Wearing
Red shoes
Light was an illusion
April 24, 2025
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025
For a slow stroll
On a rainy night
When a fallen sparrow nest
Reminds us of times lost
Times that find their way
To ancient walls
To slow walks
Like waves do
Remembering mossy rocks
Where they end up resting
At the end of a long voyage
At low tide
… And you want to return
And you think that you can
To what was a prologue
That forgot to enfold
But on a rainy night
The fallen swallow nest
Reminds you that times
Were not lost
For they were graceful and lithe
And you keep on strolling
From side streets
To side streets
April 18, 2025
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025
The
presence of love
Is the present of loving
Wrapped in a
rainbow
Of wishes we never made
And the memories
Of promises to be kept
Between the pages of a
book
Where a coquelicot
Dried its petals
In await
And on
a full mooned night
When coyotes serenade
You find that book
Where you last left
And knew the page
Where old petals became
one
With the poem
You never wrote
The present of love
Had since turned the
page
So you can read a new
poem
In the same book
April 10, 2025
© Vahé A. Kazandjian,
2025
“Women in your paintings have siren eyes” a visitor
to my gallery told me. “That is all one sees on their faces.”
“I cannot hear their song without seeing their eyes”
I replied.
… I was thinking about that conversation this
morning, and I thought about the poem by Canadian poet Margaret Atwood titled “Siren Song” inspired by the Greek mythology of the voyages of Odysseus, but
addressing the experiences of all humans through their travel through life.
The lines from that poem that remain in those after
their first reading of Atwood’s almost spiritual analysis of a facet in human
interactions are:
This
is the one song everyone
would
like to learn: the song
that
is irresistible:
the
song that forces men
to
leap overboard in squadrons
even
though they see the beached skulls
the
song nobody knows
because
anyone who has heard it
is
dead, and the others can't remember.
I stopped to think about the last two lines, as
mythology and my life experience crossed the space where time had taken respite
and made room to remembrance.
Do I paint siren eyes to remember or to forget?
Perhaps the answer is in the lines of Pablo Neruda’s
of “The Old Women of the Ocean”:
They
sit down alone on the shore
Without moving their eyes or their hands
Without changing the clouds or the silence
…
Now they have the ocean
The cold and burning emptiness
The solitude full of flames.
PS/ The photo atop the page is from the 1979 with a Minolta Mark II camera that used 110 film.
The photo of the fisherman’s wife selling sardines on the beach is from Nazaré,
Portugal., taken with a Nikon F2.
March 22, 2025
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025
It is snowing in the
desert, favorite few short days of the year when my dog and I take the first
walk of the morning in snow untouched by human feet, although there will be
many imprints from the passage of rabbits and coyotes. But more than the desert
snow, I inhale deep the new scents juniper trees and various bushes let escape
with the moisture. And I follow the patchouli and sandalwood invitation like a
young man would follow after the New Year’s dance.
Then, and often inspired
by the aquatic transformation of the desert, upon return, I pick up a book. And
my dog sleeps at the bottom of my couch.
This morning, I thought
of a poem by Khalil Gibran titled “The River Cannot Go Back”. It is not written
in the usual Gibranesque style, but the philosophy found in “The Prophet” is
there.
Here is the poem:
It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.
The message is
philosophical, didactic, and inspirational with a touch of fatalism. Yet, as I reread
this poem at various stages of my life, the meaning seems to change when I
ponder about the relationship of rivers and seas as a metaphor. I have lived in
more than a desert around the globe; I was born on the shores of the bluest
sea, and have fly casted for trout in many rivers and streams. In every instance, I
have found a philosophy of existence and an identity that has influenced my
personal outlook to an order of harmony associated with the journey through the
environments and moments, rather than their transformation into a destination.
Interestingly, while
rivers do not originate from bodies of seas, the concept of a river flowing
into the sea always seemed to suggest a return of sort, of becoming one with
the sea, or even changing its identity by becoming the sea itself.
And that realisation brought
back a few lines from Joachim Du Bellay, a 16th century French Renaissance
poet and the sonnet XXX1 published in 1558 which is still taught in schools
although it was written in Middle French and titled “Heureux qui comme Ulysse”.
This is one of the
poems I had learned in secondary school. I could recall only the first stanza,
perhaps because it had influenced me most – the finding of what matters most
after learning from any long voyage.
Here is the first
stanza:
Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a
fait un beau voyage,
Ou comme cestuy-là qui conquit la toison,
Et puis est retourné, plein d’usage et raison,
Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son âge!
(Happy he who like
Ulysses has returned successful from his travels,
or like he who sought the Golden Fleece,
Then returned, wise to the world
Live amongst his family to the end of his days!)
When I first learned
the lines of this poem, “Parents” meant
what it would mean to a young reader – mother, father, family. But today,
re-reading Gibran and counting the years since I was in secondary school, I
wondered if the sea was the parent to the river. After all, the long voyage of
days often makes us become our parents (2).
But, when our inner rivers get re-routed through of voyage of days, do we become what we always were? Do we find ourselves after trying to be what we were expected to be? Even when the river flows into the sea, can its waters still keep their “riverness” even if the dream of every sea has always been in those rivers’ riverbed?
I believe that every sea and ocean harbor the dream of, at least once, experiencing what rivers and stream feel in spring when the snow melts on the mountains and rushes down to fill those lesser bodies of water with the joy of rejuvenation and promise.
… It is snowing
outside. The bird feeder, lonesome and cold, awaits for spring to welcome birds
of all feather and their song.
And my dog patiently snores
next to my couch.
March 8, 2025
© Vahé A. Kazandjian,
2025
(1) https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2021/03/saint-exupery-shakespeare-and-armenian.html
(2) https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2024/01/jamais-vu-when-familiar-becomes-unknown.html
(3) https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2013/11/boussole.html
Under
an unmoon sky
When the
nightingale
Forgot the last word
Of its song
I tried to inspire my
pen
And write the unspoken
Word as a song
And yet
When one forgets
How to end a song
Under an unmoon sky
It is because
Of a name, short as a
word
Lonely as a night blooming
Jasmine
That folds its
Petals
At
Sunrise
March 1, 2025
© Vahé A. Kazandjian,
2025
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 through 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
