Tebi Bazmaşen
For Ani Hovannisian, after watching her documentary, The Hidden Map
Where your village once lived
nothing, a field, empty, barren
a wisp of our people in the wind
and the chirp of birds that never left
The village silenced
a lifestyle destroyed
and no one is alive
who ever lived there
their grandchild born
in foreign lands
now in old age
There are but hints
books and old photos
mostly family lore
stories of life then
passed down, altered
by each embellished
telling and retelling:
the crops and trades
the native clay
the pots they made
and the local glaze
that dull earthen red
Romanticizing the good
conveying and never
forgetting the hatred
that killed almost all
You went there
half a world away
in that hard scrabble
in that Armenian land
with no Armenians
no hint of when
or if, they will ever
return
You walked the land
in pained absence
teary wonderment and awe
in that summer wind
a pilgrimage to the past
and envisioning a present
that might or could have been
You searched for proof:
Were we ever there?
who but a dwindling few
even know or care or
even dare to visit there
In sifting the dirt
you found that proof
that swelled your heart
made you cry in grief
made you cry with hope
for what was long ago
and what was destroyed
what lives only in our hearts
our Armenian souls
You found a shard
of a shattered pot
glazed red and faded
that made you
made all of us
whole.
