Curfew in Stepanakert

Cloud over Stepanakert, May 2023 (Wikimedia Commons)

Once more, tanks,

leaning their black old bulks

against the hopeless face

of posterity

which, already, hasn’t spoken to us

for these many years…

Tanks painted in fading shades,

faces shaved in springtime, the unfolding street horizon is now shod

with the conscripts’ rising tobacco smoke 

I lay down next to the murmur

of the fountain’s mountain water,

three shadows wrapped in greatcoats

merge and lie down beside me,

their motorcars polished

hard as totalitarian lands,

and gun-barrels chilling as the eyes of fish.

As the day fades fast, this anguish

suggests a photoplay in black-and-white,

where the curfew herds people homeward

like so many dolls, hollow, ragged, leaving behind — as a microscopic sign of hope — the phosphorus of tyranny nailed to the sparks made by marching boots.

Today is the third day of curfew

and all must prim and be proper, hair combed,

all must clip short the nails of revolt,

everyone must dream in sameness of color

and similarity of trend,

all must respect the letter of the state,

which is far away, beyond misty steppes,

dispatching to us only its red light, as a sign of love

from its one-eyed, cyclopic tower —

plus the summons of November,

that shed their clothes in the icy clime

and become all fang and thorn

and swift bayonet, if met with scorn.

Traces of nails and dagger on walls adjacent to jails,

while the blood of the tortured is dried quickly

with the steamy breath of political prayer

and howls rising from Turkey.

Here, where bodies fell,

a strange bird appeared, pecking at its own pace

at something or other that we couldn’t quite place,

as the trees outside at the sight of me

scatter up the street in a big hurry, as in the fierce cold foliage flutters,

shivering, as if it’s my turn as an offering.

By Artem Harutiunian

Translated by Tatul Sonentz

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