felt the fires of your body

I envy the cling of the shirt you wear 

that, even in daylight, can be indiscreet 

and trace your torso's outline and dare 

to wrinkle coquettishly with pagan heat. 

Imagine envying an innate thing, 

and losing my senses like a flaming wing 

of a meteor? Does a shirt have feelings or soul 

that I die to hold what it can hold? 

 

What does it care that a woman desires 

to wash it because it has felt the fires 

of your body and wants to inhale 

the warmth of the collar, even the stale 

earthly memory of wear and weave 

of a sleeve? 

What does it care that I envy the clasp 

of its pearly buttons that measure the time 

of our short lives with their upward climb, 

dressing and undressing you, unasked, 

leaning against your beating heart, 

while I who envied no other's lot 

stand silent, apart and jealous of cloth. 

 

[Medaksé {1926-2014} “Envy {Yerance te}” trans. from the Armenian by Diana Der-Hovanessian, from Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond]