Fatum

translated by Diana Der-Hovanessian

There is an invisible chain in the skies unseen as pain is unseen except in the eyes. The chain settles with the galaxies of night to buckle the stars each to each.

They flicker like sacred candles and reach, but are tied to order and held separate by sight. You and I are bound like the stars by dreams, not by need. Always together, always separate. On the same course but orbits apart.

I LOVE YOUR DARK AND WICKED EYES

I love your dark and wicked eyes as deep as the mysterious evening is deep. And as dark as the spell that dusk casts. I love the vast seascape of your eyes where sin hesitates like twilight before flickering past where luck and chance have been. I love yur eyes, their drunken golden haze, eyes that magnetize the lost like wordless beams and torture the soul with their pitiless caress. I love their dark and mysterious depths.

From COMING TO TERMS, selected poems by Vahan Derian, Ashod Press, NY