To My People

Armenian Brandy Dedicated To Paruyr Sevak

I always look back at your past with surprise
At your past which is full of torture and also pride.

How did you ever cut such a long road
When that road was full of crowds
And the skies also full of clouds?

How did you manage that you, like a bee,
Extract nectar out of poison,
And out of bitterness honey you even squeeze?

Your fear of being an emigrant has turned into a nightingale
And changed your injury, and your very deep pains, into a song to sing.

When floods have passed by abusing you
How did you manage with your spadeful spring water
To keep the mill down deep in the valley working
Giving a new life to your beaten field,
And also to your tortured orchards, a beauty?

How did you manage to rise, after falling a thousand times?
How did you manage to survive , after dying a thousand times?

What miracle made you not to be extinguished as others before had done,
Those that were great and also were big fires,
While you, yourself, were a burning fire.

Within the terrifying darkness of the night
You were such a flame and such a fire !
It was burning at the cold stone bookstand
Giving fire to the peasant’s cottage that was cold,
That kept burning within the dark eyes of your daughters,
Turning the veins of your sons into blood.

It was a chimney in peaceful times — a peaceful chimney.
It was a tandour fire, a chimney smoke,
A large candle, and a torch, too!

But it was an immense flame of vengeance within an immense battle
And a fire-game announcing a triumph!

The flame never went off,
Which through long centuries kept on burning.
It was indeed a fiery flame that was never put off by foreign winds.

Instead it kept reviving and unlike other destructive fires,
It never continued spreading.

Baruyr Sevag (1924-1971)