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.

No Tear Is In Vain

When I was a kid, I knew when my father was getting ready to fly away from the daily routine: he would clean his favorite briar pipe, fill it with Capstan tobacco, get a book of poems from his library and sit on the balcony. The aroma of that tobacco signaled that no one should disturb him for a while.

… Perhaps I have inherited that ritual from him, at least in part. My favorite escape is also through poetry. So, right after sunrise and my cup of coffee, I picked I decided to leaf through Khalil Gibran’s poems.

This morning, a few lines I have read many times before, suddenly revealed a new feeling. I read:

                     I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart

                          For the joys of the multitude.

                         And I would not have the tears that sadness makes

                        To flow from my every part turn into laughter.

                    …I would that my life remains a tear and a smile.

This poem, entitled “A Tear and a Smile” made me think about many a legend I have read about or heard when traveling around the globe. Somehow, the link to tears has always been in those legends. Mostly tears of sorrow and pain. And these tears have given rise, and have given way, to the birth of rivers, lakes, or flowers. Somehow the tiny drops of tears have united to form identities of people who reflected their past upon the run of a river, the waves of a lake, or the blossom of a flower in the scorched lands and deserts.

The Legend of Aghtamar, Armenia. The first legend about tears I read was as a child. It was the Armenian legend of Aghtamar. It was the story of an Armenian princess who lived on an island in Lake Van. A commoner stole her heart and the story goes that, each night, she would light a candle and he would swim to the island. When her father found about this, he blew the candle off one night, and the boy lost his way. While drowning, his dying cries were “Akh Tamar” (Oh, Tamar!” which can be heard every night, even today. The island of Akhtamar was thus born.

Lake Van is now in Turkey, and I am not a boy anymore. Yet, the legend of Akhtamar and the commoner boy drowing in the dark crying her name has stayed with me.

The Legend of Mount Tomor, Albania.  I once was on Lake Balaton, in Hungary. An Albanian friend raised his glass to celebrate a stunning sunset. Then he asked “have you heard of our famous legend about Baba Tomor?”

“Mount Tomor is the highest and sacred mountain in Albania,” he started. “It is named after Baba Tomor, the legendary figure described as an old man with a long white beard, guarded by four female eagles. Baba Tomor fell in love with Earthly Beauty and spent his days with her. The old man’s favorite city was Berat, not in the valley of Mount Tomor. One day, when Baba Tomor was in the arms of Earthly Beauty, his opponent, Shpirag, decided to invade Berat. The four eagles woke Baba Tomor up and a titanic fight started between Baba Tomor and Shpirag. Both fighters died after inflicting deep wounds in each other. Shpirag's deep cuts can be seen on Mount Shpirag as furrows. Berat was saved, but Earthly Beauty cried so hard that she drowned in her own tears.”

“Why are you telling me this story now?” I asked.

“Because no tears go in vain, my friend,” he said in a soft voice. “From those tears the Osum River was born.”

The Paiute Legend of Pyramid Lake, Nevada. It is said that thousands of years ago, the Great Father of all indigenous people of now Nevada, California, Idaho and Oregon came to Nevada. His wisdom and knowledge attracted a married woman from Nevada who fell in love with the Great Father. One day, she killed her husband and began her search for the wise man. She found him; they fell in love, and had many children. Unfortunately the children continuously fought among themselves and the Great Father decided to send them away. Thus in various parts of the four states his children created three native American tribes were thus created by his children, namely the Pit River Tribe in the west; the Bannock Tribe in the east; and the Paiute tribe in the north and south. But the Great Father was hurt that he had sent his children away, so he left the earth and went to his home in the sky.

Two of the male siblings returned to Nevada with their warriors. And they started a new fight for dominance. Their mother was very upset; as she sat atop the mountain and watched her sons kill each other. She cried so hard that her tears formed a lake in the valley. And she turned to stone.  She is still there, all stone, looking over Pyramid Lake, Nevada.

… There are many legends about the formation of lakes from tears. I was thinking about this when kayaking on Watson Lake in Prescott, Arizona. The reason is this rock formation – it is called “The Indian Woman”.

And this is a corner of Watson Lake. There is no legend about tears and the creation of this lake, or maybe I have not heard it yet.

The Legend of the Cherokee Rose. When gold was discovered on land belonging to the Cherokee Tribe in North Carolina, the new immigrant groups decided to move the land’s natives, the Cherokee, from their land to mine for gold. So started the thousands of miles journey of the Cherokee across America. Eventually the Cherokee nation was resettled in Oklahoma. The walk across America is called the Trail of Tears, because of the hardship of the Cherokee on that infamous trail. And the legend goes that the mothers cried throughout the long journey. The Cherokee men then asked the Great One to find a way to help the women. So the Great One blossomed a new flower, the Cherokee Rose, for every tear drop along the trail. The Cherokee Rose has white blossoms with petals, one for each Cherokee tribe that walked the Trail of Tears. It also has a golden center connoting the greed of the white man for gold and fortune.

…I took this photo while on a short walk in the Moroccan desert. The scorched land makes even a pleasant hike depressing. I can only imagine how much hope The Cherokee Rose brought to all on the Trail of Tears.

According to Anton Chekhov “people do not notice if it is winter or summer when they are happy”. Perhaps. But the tears in every legend tell us that people know when they are hurt, unwanted, or taken away from where they belong.

October 16, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016

Broken Wings

It is dove hunting season. I found a dove fallen under a tree, one wing broken.

… I was 14 years old when I first read Khalil Gibran’s “The Broken Wings.” As for any young man, love was the ultimate unknown I had explored only through poems and other people’s stories. I had not read “The Prophet” yet so I discovered Gibran through his love for Selma.

As I looked at the dove with a broken wing, I had a similar tremor as when I read “The Broken Wings” almost 50 years ago. And I decided to read it again.

… It is not clear if this book is autobiographical, but as I turned the pages, I realized that it is autobiographical in a generic sense: it is the experience of every man, it is panhuman. It is about learning about love through a person, not while reading poetry or hearing the stories of others. Selma is Gibran’s introduction to that basic need and feeling. Yet, Selma is physically fragile. And when her newborn son dies, she sees death as her rescue, her passage to peacefulness. In her words:

“You have come to take me away my child . . . lead me and let us leave this dark cave.”

And she does leave that dark cave.

Years later, Gibran writes:

“Today, after many years have passed, I have nothing left out of that beautiful dream except painful memories flapping like invisible wings around me, filling the depths of my heart with sorrow, and bringing tears to my eyes; and my beloved, beautiful Selma, is dead and nothing is left to commemorate her except my broken heart and tomb surrounded by cypress trees. That tomb and this heart are all that is left to bear witness of Selma.”

… When I finished the book, I looked at the high desert outside my window. It is not the Mediterranean, nor the month of May when Gibran met Selma, but a dove with broken wings dies the same way, no matter the geography.

And I reread the line from the book when Gibran summarizes his experience with love:

“…yesterday [Selma] was a beautiful tune on the lips of life and today is a silent secret in the bosom of the earth.”

September 6, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016

When Poetry Interprets Photography

I am not a scenery and outdoors photographer. Perhaps I do not have the patience to find the right angle and wait for that split second when the light is just right. Yet, I cannot go anywhere without a camera hanging from my neck.

During a memorable hike in the Cedar Breaks National Park in Utah, I could not resist taking a few photos of the half-mile deep geologic amphitheater. I used a 1970s Vivitar Series One 70-210 mm variable zoom to reach down the amphitheater. And then a 1948 Rolleiflex TLR for a few photos of subalpine forest trees surrounding the mouth of the amphitheater.

I was looking at these photos and wondering why I took them. The few pine trees gathered in the otherwise barren amphitheater were a striking contrast to the lush forest half a mile above. And, in a strange turn of things, these two photos made me think about lines of poetry from various poets.

First, the bristlecone pine tree in the forefront of aspen trees reminded me of a line from Rumi:

“May be you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots.”

Was I? Was it why I could not figure out why I took that photo?  

Hiking such grand and open spaces often makes me feel part of the space while at the same time very alone. Not lonely though, as I feel like the countless others who have taken that hike before me have given that space a name. It is a welcoming name – in fact I think of it as a room. A vast room with no walls and no ceiling.

And that made me recall lines from the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer who suggested in his “The Half-Finished Heaven” that:

                                               “Each man is a half-open door

                                                leading to a room for everyone.”

So, was I a half-open door during that hike? What was behind the half-closed door in me? Would I have opened my doors wide if I knew they were half-open?

… Feeling alone makes me look around me. Perhaps to check if I was really alone. But that impulse allows me to see more than perhaps others notice. And what I notice stays in me, sometimes dormant for a while. And then seemingly unrelated events or moments, such as looking at photos I took and not understanding why I took them, make these dormant impressions manifest themselves.

And that is when my favorite lines from Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun made me understand why I took these photos.

                                               “Alone,

                                                 alone.

                                                Glug glug glug I drink gulps of light

                                                and I brush.

                                               So I shower and put myself back, alone.”

That was it – I was trying to put myself back, alone.

June 21, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016

Feather and Arrow

Across the whisper

Of a name in tears

_who?_

A promise

Got caught

In a net

_why?_

               A boy fell from the nest

               And a sparrow became a man

               _when?_

               Neither could fly

               In the air

               But the wind

               Took them home

               _where?_

I called the name

And it called me back

_how?_

June 19, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016

Mallarmé, Einstein and the Navajo Wisdom

It has been raining for days. It is cold, dark and wet in the desert.

Apocalyptic fires are burning in Alberta, Canada. An entire city has burned, almost 100,000 people evacuated. The skies have been night-like for days over Alberta while burning amber fills the thick air. The smoke from the blaze has traversed the continent and now can be seen in Florida.

So, I put on wool socks and fired up the fireplace. Not only for warmth but also for brightness. The skies are dark and the flames give the feeling of protection. My dog curled up under my chair to warm up his aging joints.

It was a day for poetry and contemplation.

… Yesterday, when the rain stopped for a brief moment and the sun appeared, a magnificent rainbow shaped in color and hope. So, while staring at the fire, I recalled a few lines from “Song of Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,

My oldest force is good as new,

And the fresh rose on yonder thorn

Gives back the bending heavens in dew.

My oldest force. Perhaps because it is Mother’s Day today that I thought about my mother, my oldest force. I recalled, as a child, putting my head upon her knees and asking her to run her fingers thru my long, curly hair. On this cold and rainy day, I had the feeling of a phantom limb running over my head.

Somehow, I thought of an 1850’s poem by Stéphane Mallarmé

Qui jadis, sur mes beaux sommeils d'enfant gâté

Passait, laissant toujours de ses mains mal fermées

Neiger de blancs bouquets d'étoiles parfumées.

                          (Who, in the blissful dreams of my happy childhood

                         Used to hover above me sprinkling from her gentle hands

                         Snow-white clusters of perfumed stars.)

Mallarmé. I have read many of his works when I was fervently a Baudelaire fan. The most challenging poem by Mallarmé is called “Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard” (A throw of the dice will never abolish chance) where he used visual organization of words, letter fonts and their special arrangement to allow for many interpretations. A line has stayed with me over the years:

“cadavre par le bras / écarté de secret qu’il détient”  (corpse by the arm / unattached to the secret it holds.)

A body that holds a secret. A secret that lives within a body. And the phantom hands of my mother that reached my head from the l’au delà, the hereafter.

… A throw of the dice will never abolish chance. A century later Einstein used a similar thought to describe the cosmic determinism he believed in. When criticizing quantum mechanics and its suggestion that probability and randomness are inherent to the seeming order and determinism, he said:

                                    “God does not play dice with the universe.”

But if God (however defined) did play dice, Mallarmé suggests that the rules of chance and probability would not be affected. That we would continue to be subject to certain randomness no matter how we act. Or, as I understand it, our indeterminism is pre-determined!

… I must have chuckled loudly at this thought as my dog woke up, looked at the dark skies outside, looked at me, re-positioned himself and went back to sleep.

So, there is determinism, but it is not absolute. Like rivers that search for their sea or ocean. Is it the destiny of a river to find its sea? Can a river be a lesser river if it does not find its ocean?

A few lines by Jorge Manrique came to mind:

Nuestras vidas son los rios

Que van a dar en el mar

Que us el morrir

                                  « Our lives are the rivers

                                     That empty into the sea

                                     That is our dying”

Are we the rivers determined to find our sea? A sea of tempestuous loving? An ocean of vast emptiness? Is our journey our identity before it gets transformed into a grander find? Or it does not matter if we throw a dice, just for the fun of it?

… Living in Arizona and through Native American songs/poems I have discovered a new wisdom about nature and our relationship to it. Many of these songs are associated with rituals such as initiation rites, planting or hunting. Recently I read the lyrics of a Navajo song that on this rainy day in the desert brought together my wandering thoughts back under the rainbow:

Truly in the east

The white bean

And the great corn plant

Are tied with the white lightning.

Listen! Rain approaches!

The voice of the bluebird is heard.

Truly in the east

The white bean

And the great squash

Are tied with the rainbow.

Listen! Rain approaches!

The voice of the bluebird is heard.

… Yet, the rain will end soon. I will take off my warm socks, let the fire exhale in the fireplace, and wake up my dog. Then together we will go out looking for a rainbow.

May 8, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016