Edoyan: Two Sonnets to My Mother

Sorrow has no image, it is relayed

only as fate and shade of love

that shivered, shone in your eyes

like immortal lights in holy Eden,

where there is no pain, no wound, no dungeon

to scourge the distressed body,

to turn life to stone, day to sunset

and to turn word to mute silence.

But you managed to walk that route

like a pilgrim and to keep within you

the thorns, dispensed to you by fate,

as a stern angel, with extended hand said,

“Can you bear this?’ You replied,

“Thy will be done; let me have it.”

The world as dream and love as victim,

you imbibed life from God’s hands;

what you drank was bitter, but through the prayers

a visage watched you, flooded in the light

of your ancient heritage. Loss, death, and famine –

but that which was past, you bore within you,

and to all passers-by you offered it as bread

of salvation and host of hope

in the palm of your hand. There in Eden,

a brush emanates light and in silent tenderness

a different flower bows its head

on your bushes, as in a faint glow

your life, which you have lived, passes by

like an autumn cloud over this somber earth.

————————– Henrik Edoyan

Translated by Tatul Sonentz

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