Handful of Ashes

Caroline Lavelle

Alas, you were like a grand and magnificent mansion
And I, from the white summit of your roof
In the light of the star-studded night
Listened to the fearsome flow of the euphrates below

I heard with tears, with tears
That on a day of horror massacre and blood
Your broad walls were shattered stone by stone
And thrown on the gardena around you

Did the blue room also turn to ashes
Where, within it's walls and carpets
My happy childhood rejoiced, my life grew
And my soul took flight?

My fathers' home!
Be assured that when I die
My soul will come to you as an exiled turtledove
To sing in tears its song of sorrow over your black ruins

But tell me, who will bring to me a handful
Of your sacred ashes the day I die, to put in my grave
And mix with my ashes, a singer of the homeland?
A handful of ashes with my own, ancestral home

Who will bring a handful of ashes from your ashes?
Of your memories, your suffering and your past
A handful of ashes to scatter over my heart