And was it worthwhile I wonder?
By Hamo Sahyan
(1914-1993)

 
... And was it perhaps meet for you to be born?
To head a household, or for the census ventilate a head?
Your pursuit of passing immortality,
Was it worth the heavy losses you inflicted?
 
Was it fit for you to blast those rocks
To excavate a craggy bed for you to enter?
To repeat a plain essential truth,
To find a handful of selfhood,
Were you just to agitate such froth?
 
Was it worth getting so riled up,
Given your impotence to pull together
The two fugitive poles of your own being?
Was it good of you to shoulder a mass of worries?
 
If you weren’t to explode tempestuously
And would not repel far away from the world
Flabby mankind’s and men’s trespasses,
Was it meet for you to rumble mightily?
And then your being born, was it at all worthwhile?
 
 
Translated from Armenian by Jack Aslanian^©
 
 








 

I have had it
By Hamo Sahyan
(1914-1993)

 
 
Already I am tired of flowing calmly,
Of my discursive thoughts in obscurity,
Of prissy words, of coquettish love.
I am tired already.
 
Of being buffeted unseen on vile seas,
Of being tested so as vendor or buyer,
Of being shelled by volleys of reproach,
I am tired already.
 
I am tired already of roving vainly,
Of lighting candles to fake deities,
And of applauding dancers hoi polloi.
I am tired already.
 
I am tired of twisting to each gust of wind,
Of inwardly mocking the pain in my soul,
Of my own shadow terrorizing me.
I am tired already.
 
I am tired of helping people who are tired
Of repeating endlessly recited ditties...
I am tired also of being so tired.
I am tired. So very tired.
 
Translated from Armenian by Jack Aslanian^©
 










 

Yet they tell me to behave myself
By Hamo Sahyan
(1914-1993)

 
 
The oceans breach their fringes
And tear themselves up unsparingly...
Alarms aplenty make life maddening,
Yet they do tell me to behave myself.
 
Peaceful days, alas, do flit away
What is to happen, can one surely know?
The world has gone mad, if I may so say,
And yet they tell me to behave myself.
 
Be it wheat or buds, they’ve all gone mad,
Tickle the stone, faints of glee.
A whole universe has now gone insane,
And yet they tell me to behave myself.
 
A whole universe has now gone insane,
Its eyes fixedly ogling my soul...
In my own ashes I burn flameless,
And yet they tell me to behave myself.
 
You madmen close or distanced afar,
In my own ashes I burn flameless.
Yet, my life has passed... And thousand pities
That I am powerless to become insane.
 
 
Translated from Armenian by Jack Aslanian^©