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lyrics

THE DANCE
Siamanto, Bloody News from My Friend, Wayne State University Press, 1996,
tr. Peter Balakian and Nevart Yaghlian

In a field of cinders where Armenian life
was still dying,
a German woman, trying not to cry
told me the horror she witnessed:

"This thing I'm telling you about,
I saw with my own eyes.
From my window of hell
I clenched my teeth
and watched the town of Bardez turn
into a heap of ashes.
The corpses were piled high as trees,
and from the springs, from the streams and the road,
the blood was a stubborn murmur
and still calls revenge in my ear.

Don't be afraid. I must tell you what I saw,
so people will understand
the crimes men do to men.
For two days, by the road to the graveyard….

Let the hearts of the world understand.
It was Sunday morning,
the first useless Sunday dawning on the corpses.
From dawn to dusk I had been in my room
with a stabbed woman—
my tears wetting her death—
when I heard from afar
a dark crowd standing in a vineyard
lashing twenty brides
and singing dirty songs.

Leaving the half-dead girl on the straw mattress,
I went to the balcony on my window
and the crowd seemed to thicken like a clump of trees.
An animal of a man shouted, ‘you must dance,
dance when our drum beats.'
With fury whips cracked
on the flesh of these women.
Hand in hand the brides began their circle dance.
Now, I envied my wounded neighbor
because with a calm snore she cursed
the universe and gave her soul up to the stars….

‘Dance,' they raved,
‘dance till you die, infidel beauties.
With your flapping tits, dance!
Smile for us. You're abandoned now,
you're naked slaves,
so dance like a bunch of fuckin' sluts.
We're hot for your dead bodies.'
Twenty graceful brides collapsed.
‘Get up,' the crowd screamed,
brandishing their swords.

Then someone brought a jug of kerosene.
Human justice, I spit in your face.
The brides were anointed.
‘Dance,' they thundered—
‘here's a fragrance you can't get in Arabia.'

With a torch, they set
the naked brides on fire.
And the charred bodies rolled
and tumbled to their deaths....

I slammed the shutters,
sat down next to my dead girl
and asked: ‘How can I dig out my eyes?'"

credits

from The Serpent and The Crane, released April 24, 2020

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Alan Semerdjian New York, New York

Songwriter, poet, and educator Alan Semerdjian has been making and performing music in the NYC/Long Island area and beyond since 1990. His entire annotated musical catalog will be available exclusively here on bandcamp by 2023.

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