Holy Translators
I’ll always be in love with Father Tigran.
I’ll wear a long black robe and never marry.
I’ll stroke my bushy beard and lecture on
the Holy Translators of the fifth century,
who invented the Armenian alphabet
to record the Bible. To translate means to carry
from one place to another, like a jet.
We are their inheritors in this Muslim country.
We brought the printing press to Isfahan,
we introduced oil lamps in Austria,
we put the first rover on the moon,
and when the Turks marched us to Syria
we sent a student my age to Berlin
to plant a bullet in the Pasha’s brain.
Mirror
Whose eyes are those that glisten Listen behind my darker eyes? Cries Whose silent lips that part Heart like fish in that silvered lake? Ache Who writes across your page? Age Who stirs behind your gloss? Loss
