YEARNING

Poem for Today - May 19, 2014

THE ANALYSIS 

OF YEARNING (Garod)

I know the dark need, the yearning, that want,

in the same way the blind man knows

the inside of his old home.

I don’t see my own movements

and the objects hide.

But without error or stumbling

I maneuver among them,

live among them,

move like the self-winding clock

which even after losing its hands

keeps ticking and turning

but shows neither minute nor hour.

And dangling between darkness and loneliness

I want to analyze this want

like a chemist

to understand its nature and profound mystery.

And as I try

there is laughter

from some mysterious tunnel,

laughter from an indescribable distance,

from an unhearable distance.

A city sparrow with a liquid song

changes its ungreen life

Into music from an unechoing distance,

an unhuntable distance.

And words start hurting me

as they mock, echo from the unhuntable distance,

the merciless distance.

I walk from wall to wall

and the sound of my steps

seems to come from far away

from that merciless distance,

that impossible distance.

I am not blind

but I see nothing

around me, because

vision has detached itself

and reached that distance

that is impossibly far,

excessively far.

I run after myself

incapable of ever reaching or

catching what I seek.

And this is what is called

Want and longing or “garod.”

© Barouyr Sevag,

from Colorado Review.  

Translated from the Armenian, 

© 1978  by Diana Der-Hovanessian.

Found in Language for a New Century,

Edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal

and Ravi Shankar, pages 110-112