Childhood Home

If a miracle should take my road

to the Euphrates of my childhood days

I could find our small ancestral house

just by breathing (even both eyes closed).

From the blue-flecked light that plays

on its gilded water's flow

I would recognize the brook going

through my childhood days.

I could pass a thousand poplars

and find the single slender tree

that rustled upward, skyward

wearing heaven with its leaves.

I would inhale the winds of daybreak

to find the smoke that rose,

the aroma of our oven

of bread baking that was ours.

If a miracle should take me

to my childhood there,

I could find our house by breathing,

eyes closed, breathing in our air.

* Translated from the Armenian by Diana Der-Hovanessian.