Refuge
in the Shadows
By
Krikor Der Hohannesian
Cevena
Barva Press
Somerville,
Massachusetts
44
Pages
$7.00
Review
by Dennis Daly
Those
of us who hear disembodied voices have been given a bad rap in today’s
technology-based world. How unfortunate! A good case could be made that human
beings are sentinels deployed by our planet, or perhaps universe, to listen and
record. But even sentinels have a responsibility to their own species and must
respond by acting accordingly.
Some
of the most adept of these sentinels society calls poets. They provide conduits
for the competing voices (or muses as other generations have labeled them)
buzzing around the ether.
Krikor
Der Hohannesian takes his responsibility as a poet-sentinel seriously and
responds to his voices with a righteous fervor and a singular decency. His
first poem, Elegy, sets the tone and stakes out his territory. The poet speaks
from the Granary, a Boston graveyard. He says,
…But
listen…
in
the shadows of ancient elm and maple
and
you may hear it…
the
wispy, low keening
of
founding ghosts
mourning
the sins of us,
their
promise. Take heed,
take
heed they whisper—refuge
from
their judgment elusive as grace
for
the inattentive…
After
these ghostly, somewhat pissed-off, whispers, the poet opens up the context to
all creation, or at least all creation as we know it. The Poem In the Beginning
ties the existence of nature’s many voices to man’s ability to hear and
understand. Der Hohannesian explains,
The
puffs of cumulus born of
sea
mist and updrafts, wind-blown urns
for
thirsty primeval forests. The desultory
sowing
of pod and seed, the destruction
by
wildfires, hurricanes, tornados,
ice,
snow, flood and drought. Rebirth
rode
the fickle winds of change. Until
erectus, habilis, neanderthalis, sound
fell
on no human ear. But once heard
there
was no denying a force to be heeded:
a
herald of tidings, bearer of gifts, the messenger
that
warned of danger…
In
the same poem the author fearlessly engages his voices with indignation and
passion. Consider these lines,
…
human sounds, too, that rise
on
the wind but are easily lost:
the
wail of a Darfuri child, starved,
black
flies feasting on black skin,
a
Shia wife keening—
her
lost husband lost to a vest
of
detonated shrapnel,
the
shouts for justice
from
the disenfranchised,
from
those who have lost heart
a
thunderous silence, whispers
from
the souls of the dead…
Sometimes
the voice of silence both comforts and confounds, whereas the alternative
introduces another reality, nullification. The poem entitled A Way of Life
sounds out clattering, splintering, a
screech, and a thud. These are sounds of demolition, the end of a way of life.
The poet describes the terrible suddenness of change and life’s non-transitions
here,
Henry
and his wife both near 100 years,
eight
decades together in this his house of birth,
defying
entropy—suddenly vanished
like
wraiths in the night…
Voices
come in many forms. Sometimes even the motion of hands delivers a jaw-dropping
eloquence. Der Hohannesian begins his poem These Hands this way,
How
strange to look at them
with
a young child’s awe
these
hands I take for granted.
These
hands that point
and
beckon, clap and slap,
accent
speech with dips and swoops,
and
held my children new-born,
tiny
fists clenched, grasping at air…
In
the poem A Man is Down the poet’s persona lies awake listening the musical
voices of nature. He uncodes the dirge of wind and rain and discovers death by
violence. The sounds of suffering fill the air. The poet expresses it this way,
a
wife is keening…
a child is squalling…
I
must grieve with them, I must
mourn
him and all like him who
choose
to rise against the oppressor
a
man is down…
and
others will rise in his stead,
the
rain, and wind, they tell me so…
I
found the poem entitled Lest We Forget irritating, grating, and probably the
most interesting piece in this collection. The narrative focus on an adolescent
Iraqi child named Ali who has lost both arms, his parents and his siblings in
an American missile strike. He whispers a wish for new prosthetic arms.
Apparently the news media has taken an interest in Ali for the moment and his
voiced wish has possibility. But the fickle media jumps onto the infamous rescue
of Private Lynch and Ali is abandoned to his horrendous fate. I accept the
story line and the ensuing pathos. Only a hard-hearted son-of-a-bitch realist
would suggest apologies, reparations, and leaving these devastated people
alone. The emphasis placed on the word leaving. A feel-good trip to the US for
Ali seems beside the point. Hundreds of limbless, perhaps less photogenic,
children would never be considered for such staged missions of mercy. Such a mission strikes me as just as
dishonest and as political as the Lynch rescue farce. But Der Hohannesian sees it differently. Whether
he’s right or wrong, the world needs more people who think as Der Hohannesian
does. He’s clearly a better person than
I am. He believes one act of kindness,
staged or not, cynical or not, should carry the day. His poetic passion rages
defiantly from the page. Here is a
lovely meditation hidden in the heart of the poem’s narrative that says a lot
about the sensitivities of this poet,
…His
pain pulsates
Behind
dilated eyes, brown
Iraqi
eyes, soft as those of a desert
camel.
Bewilderment flickers like passing
shadows
through the merciless yellow-white
of
klieg lights. I wonder where
his
adolescent soul wanders…
The
poem Requiem, a hymn of remembrance to the poet’s dead mother, conjures up the
genocide against the Armenian people perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks around
the time of the First World War. Ghosts are everywhere, haunting the wind with
atrocity after atrocity. Memories like this do not die. Der Hohannesian
laments,
Almost
a century has passed, fresh rumors float on the wind.
Osman’s
descendants intend to plow under
All
vestiges, once and for all to silence the screams,
The
pleading, the cursing against a forsaking God,
The
raging against their butchers by ghostly spirits…
But,
the poet continues,
…Anatolian
breezes
Will
forever betray them, bearing bone dust
And
blood motes into every fissure and crevice
Where
Armenians once lived…
Many
of today’s Turks, it is worth noting, including the great writer Orhan Pamuk,
are breaking with the past and admitting these long denied historical truths.
Here’s hoping that this trend continues.
If
you like a writer who puts his conscience first before other considerations and
you appreciate the delicate and intricate language of weather and wind chimes
you will love Der Hohannesian. Another terrific book from Cervena Barva Press.
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