Giorgi Arabuli emerges from the spiritual ordeals of the Khevsureti – region where he was born, from mythology, mysticism, from personal histories of legendary or real people; he uses dialect and by all these means he creates his poetics, which are completely contemporary and loaded with metaphors and existential thoughts. 

‘Both greater and transient lives wail in poets feelings and it infects the reader too. And the end of both lives is equally apocalyptic. Dear names such as Khitale, Chirdili and others remain enigmas in the post-apocalyptic dream. ‘Times has woven ruins with dry fern’... Only fern, the oldest dweller of the Earth remains to witness its end.’ /Z. Kiknadze, critic/

EXTRACT
Translated into English by Donald Rayfield

THE CARES OF OLD AGE

Berdia surveyed his patrimony,
He laid a stone and said, ‘Here I aged.’
Berdia surveyed his high and his low moments.
He laid a stone and said, ‘Here I aged.’
Berdia surveyed his conscience,
He laid a stone and said, ‘Here I aged.’
Berdia made the sign of the cross,
He laid a stone and said, ‘Here I aged.’
Berdia surveyed his wife,
He laid a stone and said, ‘Here I aged.’
Berdia surveyed his life,
He laid a stone and said, ‘Here I aged.’
Berdia surveyed, but could no longer find a stone to lay,
So Berdia said, ‘Everything has its time.’