My homeland, your rotten fang
goes into my throat

Enough! Push it through or take it out,
I flounder like a butterfly pinned.

My homeland, in this shooting race,

for which you are the circus ring,

I am the siding duck staring into your gun,

waiting for my forefinger to release the spring.

And fan-like, as the phoenix do,
I die, next I rise from the dead -

now I'm cannon fodder under your flag,
now I'm a bloodsucker stuck on your vein.

Like a mule I carry on my back
the dear waste of your fossil yore,

this my life is a losing game

and I will have a chance no more.

I stop this haggling I've got nothing to do a deal,
my only life weighs zero on your scales,
surely it is a losing game.

Yet I p a rdon you, my homeland dear.

© Violet Grigorian

Violet Grigorian was born in Teheran. In 1975 her family repatriated to Armenia and now she lives in Abovian, Armenia. She studied Philology at the Yerevan Pedagogical Institute.

Grigorian's first book came out in 1991 in Yerevan: "Verily, verily I say". The book took the annual award of the Writers' Union of Armenia. Later, it was republished in Los Angeles, U.S., in 1998. The same year, her long poem "The City" was published in Los Angeles as a book to take the "Golden Reed" state award in Armenia for 1999. In 2000, within the framework of the Festival East-West in France, Editions A Die published a book of her poems translated into French: "Que cet hiver est rude". She participated in 2002 at the Struga Poetry Night.