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[delga]

For My Father
by Sylva Gaboudikian

Our trivial fights over spading
The vegetable patch, painting the
Garden fence ochre instead of blue,
And my resistance to Armenian food
In preference for everything American,
Seemed, in my struggle for identity,
To be the literal issue.

Why have I waited until your death
to know the earth you were turning
was Armenia, the color of the fence
your homage to Adana, and your other
complaints over my own complaints
were addressed to your homesickness
brought on by my English.

--

If I Don't Love You
by Sylva Gaboudikian (trans. Daniel Janoyan)

If I don’t love, I don’t love you,
Why is the winter so very like spring
And the winter-sun very burning,
And the silent sky so very deep,
If I don’t love, I don’t love you?

If you don’t love, you don’t love me,
Why do people, houses, pavements, and snow
Open the way for me so very lovingly,
If you don’t love, you don’t love me?

If we don’t love, we don’t love each other,
Why are the stars so very countless,
And the days and nights so very beautiful,
And the world so very noble and friendly?