Nora Nadjarian

In the audience,
the eyes of the astonished shells.

My body is water,
voluminous, untamed.
...

The time came when they longed to return.
My father walked circles in the living room,
my mother packed and unpacked her hands.
We will leave when the rain stops, they said.
The rain in this country is so unkind.
...

They moved into the house
and wishing it wasn't so empty
opened a window to let everything in -
...

He and she take it in turns to row the boat with their arms,
eat raw fish, read moonlit maps, crush stars into milk, swallow storms.
They kiss dark nights and suck the strength of each other's breath,
...

A whole sea between us-

You said we could meet half-way, if we swam.
You said we could, it is only a sea-
...

They grew up watching the salt scattering flight of gulls,
the horizon and the chaos of waves. By day, they waited for ships.

Every night, when the world fell asleep,
...

For

Basim Furat

Emad Jabbar

and Yilma Tafere Tasew
...

He was saved, mine,
the moment sandmud
touched his palm.
...

I fed my voice to the seagulls.
Watched them snap at my lips
with their polished yellow beaks,
squabble and tear and devour
...

I look at the horizon for a trillion, trillion years.

It will happen, perhaps, and I will be a witness. The earth will miraculously
cure itself. Water will turn into ice. Mesmerised, I will watch the white sculptures,
remember the Arctic and its magnificence, and shiver on the shore. The sun will play
...

I studied the silence of the stars,
the black, icy skies, the skeletons of trees.
For centuries my mind was at work,
sharp yet bitter, and now old and strange.
...

seeds scattered in the wind
here and there who are you
where's armenia -ian -ian
...

stand on the bridge
and listen to the silence of our ancestors
in the marrow of your bones
...