The Vintage

"How abundant was autumn this year...
Its heroic suns and blessings,
After our pains, our ashes and deaths,
Have filled field and valley, village and city immensely
With unknowable prosperity.
I write to you that strange vision which I saw...
This morning was the dawn of the vintage,
The same fountain of the old days, across the wine press,
Was singing in the pond which was the mirror of our childhood
Such a song that only an orphan could understand...
In the vineyards, bunches of grapes under the vines,
Burned like the hearts kindled with hope
Which waited by the roads of those who were deported...
And the thousands of pieces of the most blessed grape,
Reflowering under the blue of the homeland,
Were as numerous as the stars of the nights...
The cranes, burning for what they had missed,
Singing their call came down to the fields from the top of the berry tree.
From the depths of the vineyards the sound of joy overflew,
In the fields, around the wheat that they had reaped,
The Armenian brides danced the whole day by the bales...
This morning of vintage was our first revival...
After years of terror and mourning
It seemed today was both man's and nature's resurrection...
After this day of labor and drunkenness,
When the night fell like velvets,
And the golden grapes rested in tubs from hill to hill,
By the fountain, one morning you left me with a kiss...
I, your sister, an orphan girl with clear eyes,
Suddenly it seemed that I saw our deceased father...
I was shaking with fear...he was embracing me with love,
Immersing his hands in my hair...
Sobbing from his joy or his old hope he said to me:
'Girl, perhaps you do not recognize me...
But you are my soul's and my heart's sacred fruit...
Like many others, I also died one day, for all of you...
And from the day you were born, and from your sun until today,
This is that first year,
When Armenia's red vines of the vineyards
-Write to your brother- have sprouted without blood...'
The shadow of this old sweetness wetted my clear eyes,
And in the dark, moving farther under the stars with his shroud,
As the specter turned back -'Was it really our father?'-
As the specter turned back, he told the processions of those returning
from the vintage:
'Neighbors of old days and pilgrims of labor,
May you be blessed, sing, may you all be blessed,
And believe my good news,
Under the law of justice and the law of your own will,
Believe me, from now on you will drink your new wine of springs
From your vessel or your silver cup, without blood..."