6. POETRY IS POWER


After descending from the monastery of Tatev, we arrive to a huge slaughterhouse close to Goris. Images of the vast kombinat from outside, Nadezhda's voice off screen.




Nadezhda: “Poetry is power," M once said to Akhmatova, and she bowed her head on the subtle neck. “If they kill people for poetry, it means they fear and respect it. Therefore, poetry is power”. M acted as if he was powerful, and this only incited those who wanted to destroy him.




Inside the kombinat, Osip's voice is back over the images of slaughter. Excerpts from the poem “The century”.




Osip:

My century, my beast,

who will dare to look

into your eyes

to solder with blood

the spine of two eras?


The blood that builds

gushes out of earthly things;

the parasite only trembles

on the threshold of the new days.

The creature, so long as it has

enough life left,

must carry the backbone to the end;

and a wave plays upon the invisible spine...


And the buds will swell again,

and the green shoots will sprout.

But your spine has been smashed,

my marvellous, my unfortunate century.

And you look back, cruel and weak,

with an insane smile,

like a beast that has once been supple,

contemplating the tracks you have left.

 

The journey continues from Goris towards Nagorno Karabakh. The Armenian landscape and nature become barer and barer the closer we get to the mountains. In the evening, we decide for a last stop in the plains. We find out we are in the area of the ancient, neolithic astronomical observatory of Zorats Khar in Karahunj, “the Armenian Stonehenge”.


The guide [XXXXX] approaches us and starts telling about the genesis of those stones. While the visit continues, with images of huge megaliths carved for divining and observing stars, the guide says the settlement is the most ancient astronomical observatory in the world and shows us how to calculate the time with the figure and observe stars through the holes in the stones.

Exterior night. Transfer to Karabakh. The car rides the Lachin corridor. The border guards warn the group we are entering the territory of the self-proclaimed republic of Nagorno Karabakh, where peace had never arrived and the cease-fire lasts from 1994.