Bequest to the Past
1.
Dawn at Ari Burnu
(Anzac Cove)
Beyond the range of human song
a bird calls to the hidden sun;
the slow tide seems to stumble
on a phrase;
tentatively, clouds take wing
in colours fugitive as dawn;
on the headland, batteries
of cameras flare like guns.
2.
On the ridge
of Chunuk Bair -
April 25
On this morning
stands of pine
rise numerous
as fallen men;
dark green regiments
bear witness:
legion are the slain.
Conifers have grown
from splintered limbs
and shrapnel scars
to reach commanding height
on Chunuk Bair
and rear up from ravines
to camouflage all trace
of killing-fields.
Near mouths of trenches
where new forest
marches on the ancient field
that heard the rumours issuing
across the Hellespont from Troy,
a wolf appears
between the sand and trees
and sniffs the unquiet peace,
his muzzle trained
toward the riddled mass
of cliffs and spurs.
3.
Bequest to the Past
If they could come back
on such a day, and witness
this tranquillity -
the way the sea curves
close to the shore, soft-
lipped waves barely moving;
and the wild romance
of the Judas trees
like a lost dawn
in the cemeteries,
irises banked deep
below Shell Green
as spring finds Gallipoli -
the bitter campaign
of nineteen fifteen
would seem a macabre,
desperate dream.
4.
Envoi
Morning sings
a song of spring,
blossom dense
on wild peach trees.
White orchards
vibrate with wings;
fields green
under veils of grain.
They came to die
in spring,
when all the earth
fulfils its promise.
They own the earth
they lie in,
on Gallipoli,
and it owns them.
The battlefields of the Dardanelles,
remembered as "Gallipoli":
April - August 1915
* * * * *
Returning to Armenia
The river gives her access
to the past: her life,
their deaths.
"My brother's grave was here,
in this white sand beside the river.
The day after we buried him,
the wild dogs dug him up.
We gathered up his arms, his head,
and covered them again.
A few days after that,
my mother died...
"I found her here, half-covered
by the water, and I clung to her.
A hoja took a stick and pushed her
out into the current. I watched her
float away with all the others.
The hoja put me on his donkey,
took me to a town.
Five years old I would have been.
Somehow I survived."
Branched arms and withered twigs
of hands reach down, to set
a sprig of blossom floating
in the clear Euphrates.
From the testimony of a survivor, more than
half a century after the Armenian genocide.
Свидетельство о публикации №104042500300