This is one of my favourite poems…  by Yeghishe Charents –  ????? ??????

Enjoy.

I love the sun-baked taste of Armenian words,
the lilt of ancient lutes in sweet laments,
our blood-red, fragrant roses bending
as in Nayiran dances, danced still by our girls.

I love the deep night sky, our lakes of light,
the winter winds that howl like dragons exhaling fire.
The meanest huts with blackened walls are dear to me;
each of the thousand year old city stones.

Wherever I go, I take our mournful music,
our steel forged letters turned to prayers.
However sharp my wounds or drained of blood
or orphaned, my yearning heart turns there with love.

There is no brow, no mind, like Narek’s, Koutchak’s,
No mountain peak like Ararat’s.
Search the world there is no crest so white, so holy.
So like an unreached road to glory, Massis mountain that I love.

1920 – 1921

Keghart... one my favourite churches in Armenia.

 translated by

Diana Der Hovanessian and Marzbed Margossian
Ardis Publishers, Ann Arbor, 1986

Tags: Armenian, Diana Der Hovanessian, Keghart, sun baked Armenian words, Yeghishe Charents