At Madame Hagopian’s
Are you hungry, my child?
Are you thirsty?
Clean your boots very well, then bring them to my room.
The streets in Marsovan are narrow and dirty.
Where are the girls?
They were at the windows of the church.
My uncle was a bachelor. My aunt was a poetess.
The rich and the poor are alike before God.
Pride is a flower that grows in the devil’s garden.
Death is a black camel that kneels at every man’s gate.
The most useful insects are the bee and the silk-worm.
My cat is not so strong as your little dog.
Formerly there were many princes in Italy; now there is only a king.
The king and the queen will be in Rome on the 10th of December.
England has a wise old queen. The English navy and the German army
are mighty. The Turkish soldiers are brave.
The city of Trebizond has 45,000 inhabitants. I do not think that there can be
a more beautiful old castle in the world than that of Heidelberg.
Here are the books you ordered.
The gentleman I walked with brought them.
These boys are diligent. Those men are idle.
If he is rich, why does he not pay his debts?
The sun is bright. The stars are distant.
Love all, trust a few.
My neighbor has 3 pounds of sugar. The princess has two palaces.
It is said that the American soldiers won the last battle.
That bitter medicine was for my brother-in-law.
Where are the red ribbons Miss Arpinaz bought?
The quieter a life is, the happier it is.
Will you take a walk with me after dinner?
Your brother has been to London, so have I;
but he cannot go to New York this year, nor can I.
He saved himself by jumping through the window.
The house was half-burnt. And he went out, and wept bitterly.
Hasten to finish your letter for the courier will come in half an hour.
What did the Englishman promise you yesterday?
There is a nest in the belfry. The doors of the schoolhouse are old.
The leaves of the flowers are yellow. The tail of the black dog is long.
With the heave of the shovel.
The ship goes down to the river. The years of the famine.
When will you set out?
Shall you soon come back?
I have three dresses, a silk one and two woolen ones.
It is very cold tonight, therefore I advise you to take a coat.
Come nearer. One needs much money to make this journey.
If you have some good wine, give me a bottle of it.
This poem is an assemblage from Kevork H. Gulian’s Elementary Modern Armenian Grammar (1895). Gulian was a professor at Anatolia College in the city of Marsovan (Ottoman Empire) until 1915, when the Armenians at the college were murdered at the order of the Ottoman government; his Grammar was a primer for Western Armenian, now listed by UNESCO as an endangered language.
–Susan Barba
Susan Barba is the author of two poetry collections, Fair Sun and geode, which was a finalist for the New England Book Awards and the Massachusetts Book Awards. She is the editor of American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide, which won the 2023 American Horticultural Society Book Award. Her poems and prose have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The New Republic, PN Review, and elsewhere. She works as a senior editor for The New York Review of Books.