For Grandmother, Coming Back For the dusty rugs,
and the dye of blue-roots,
for the pale of red stomachs of sheep,
you come back.
For the brass ladle
and the porous pot of black
from your dinner of fires,
I call your name like a bird. For the purple fruit
for the carrots like cut fingers
for the riverbed damp
with flesh,
you come back. For the field of goats
wet and gray,
for the hoofs and sharp bones
floating in the broth,
I wave my arms full of wind. For the tumbling barrel
of red-peppers,
for the milled mountain of wheat
for the broken necks
of squash fat and full of seed,
I let my throat open. Author Information Writer: Peter Balakian (1951 - )
Writer's Country: United States
Original Language: English
Genre: Poetry
Event: Armenian GenocideFROM the poetry book Sad Days of Light by Peter Balakian. Copyright © Peter Balakian. Reprint courtesy of the author. BIO:
Poet and acclaimed author Peter Balakian was born in 1951 and grew up in New Jersey. He received his BA from Bucknell University and a Ph.D. from Brown University. Though he grew up listening to stories of his Armenian roots from his grandmother, it was not until he was an adult that he learned of his family’s near escape from the Armenian Genocide of 1915. This discovery prompted the writer to pen his much acclaimed memoir Black Dog of Fate which won the 1998 PEN/Martha Albrand Prize. Peter Balakian is a professor of English at Colgate University. He was the first director of Colgate’s Center for the Study of Ethics and World Societies (1998-99). He lives with his wife and children in Hamilton, New York. BIBLIOGRPAHY: June-tree: new and selected poems, 1974-2000, New York: Harper Collins, 2001. Black Dog of Fate: a Memoir, New York: Basic Books, 1997. Dyer’s Thistle, Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon Press, 1996. Reply from Wilderness Island: Poems, New York: The Sheep Meadow Press, 1988. Sad Days of Light, New York: The Sheep Meadow Press, 1983. Father Fisheye: Poems, New York: The Sheep Meadow Press, 1979.
|
