I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Atrocities!

Vahan Tekeyan was an Armenian poet who survived the Turkish genocide of 1914 because he was away on business. He lived in exile in Cairo until his death in 1945, but he was known as "the Prince of Armenian Poetry."


I found this in a volume called "Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness," occasional poems written about historical events. Since "Twentieth-Century" is in there, you probably guessed it's mostly about wars, atrocities, pogroms, crackdowns and revolutions. 


It'd sure be nice if we didn't know what that was like, here in the futuristic 21st-century. I'm reading a few books on torture, specifically the so-called "Torture Memos" by the Office of Legal Counsel to the Justice Department which more or less authorized whatever the CIA approved as far as torture methods. (Apparently, we're the good guys until the bad guys start to look threatening.)


But this isn't a politics blog, which I'm unqualified to write anyway. It's about poetry. And this is one of the most effective things I've read in a while about the historical tragedies we lovely humans keep embroiling ourselves in.


It seems he does it by focusing on the oppressed, not damning the oppressors. It's also vague enough to apply to so many situations, but the imagery is vivid and concrete. And a well-timed plea or two to God never hurts a poem, I think. 

Prayer on the Threshold of Tomorrow

Vahan Tekeyan

Look. New sprouts push through the fields.
But which are thorns and which wheat
I do not know. Perhaps to the appetite
that is sated, all is chaff,
while to the hungry all is wheat.


Undistinguishable sounds, blows, footfalls
thud in the distance, an agonizing attack,
where he oppressed plant red
flame with their blood.
And the rains sweat and expand
into floods that shake the walls
of the oldest dams.


Lord, now is the time to send
your wisdom and kindness
to the tortured who, although
they have forgotten, need you as they hurl
themselves closer to the precipice.


Oh, God, who trimmed the wick of the mind
and poured the oil of life, do not let
your lamps be overturned.
Let them illuminate paths to your truth.


Plant love in the eyes of today's
and tomorrow's might. Do not let
their hearts close.


And do not let the hearts of the child
and the aged be strangers
to tenderness and hope.


Let the struggle of our time be short.
Let it be settled with justice


Let the fortress of egos,
that huge barricade,
crumble. And let every treasure
go to every man. Let every garden
gate be open. But let no flower be crushed.
No single branch fall.