YEREVAN, MARCH 8, ARMENPRESS. As Armenia is celebrating women’s day today on March 8th, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan went on Facebook early morning to congratulate women on this occasion.

“Dear women, mothers, sisters and daughters,” he said. “I would like to congratulate you all on March 8th and on this occasion I want to recite Hovhannes Shiraz’s Garnanamut for you,” Pashinyan said and recited the famed Armenian poet’s Garnanamut [Beginning of Spring].

Garnanamut is Shiraz’s (1915-1984) first work that was published in 1935.

Below is an unofficial translation of Garnanamut.

“Violets at my feet and lilies in my hands, and roses at my cheeks and the spring below my chest, with the skies in my soul and the sun in my eyes, and the fountains on my tongue from the mountain I came down to the city – and I wandered jumping and splashing on the sidewalks violets and roses and snow-white lilies, and people, seeing me, saw a different world in their tired eyes, they saw a fresh scented spring – what a freshness, - they said, that a freshness – and opened their windows for me, and I, with an open heart, was passing by and singing and sprinkling violets and roses and charming jasmines, as if an entire nature had become a youngster and came down to the city from the mountains, would pass with an emerald tale from country to country, sprinkling the tulips in his hands, the dawn of our songs and the spring of our mountains”.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan