17
the frozen sadness of an unmasked night unmasked and ripe akin to a love hour by hour I enter within line by line I too become frozen there where you grew to the stature of my city becoming as familiar with my soul as my city is line by line I find you —the night sings sadly batting its weary eyes— I extend my hand to you playing the song of encounter in your eyes —destroyed— that grew up tearless it is you I now seek even more than my city to live within you
27
that which far away we birth in silence separates here from its core page by page that which becomes an abode a day lost within the year remains my love love
47
I came but only after being lost the road was empty though dark, I came having pocketed the darkness crossing over the heart I came and found you naked—city
39
eyes of darkness shut where I was born alone barefoot outside the city perhaps shivering, there where the winds spoke instead of singing there where many others forgot their birth I am not contrary
45
as if in the night of the dead city we were born with no way back naked— whimpering we won’t return there anymore where we don’t know where but here the trees of spring are bare we naked—as if our eyes naked as the night of the dead city as if you left me with the light arrived afar
7
again I embrace you with my destiny we are together now— my loneliness it is your love your loneliness my pain I embrace you together with the street and we arrive in the city arm in arm up the street — down the street from the café we move on to the house Rochechouart No. 61 where my uncle has piled words of intoxication in lieu of tears empty like the streets of autumn —I am now silent within— my insides ashes of birth as a picture —my life has turned into an image of the past – (there is no more sound from without all sounds are asleep)
31
to be after everything always night and to sway with fortune for the light to be with everything always dark and to wait with hope for the end to be in every country at the same time and to feel lonely alone
In ancient city lamentations, the destruction of cities results from the departure of a protecting goddess, to whom female mourners negotiate the fate of their city and community. This select collection of poems from Kazandjian’s latest book, suspended line, reflects the experience of a Diasporan Armenian, whose loneliness exists “in every country / at the same time.” The lover, likened to the city itself, becomes the object of affection sought by the narrator as a place to “live within” and as a place of comfort. But that solace is temporary, and our narrator painfully embraces the lover, “together with the streets,” silently moving through familiar places—spaces of the past which now are “all sound asleep.” “In the night of the dead city / we were born”—the city was lost, just like the narrator who came upon her. The protective goddess has departed, leaving her city bare and naked, void of light, a place where the winds cease to sing. But these poems attempt to revoke this befallen fate where, “many others / forgot their birth.” Unmasked, through these suspended lines, they sing a lament of their fate through poetic verses.
Tamar Boyadjian