ARMENIAN SKETCHES

	by Diana Der-Hovanessian


	WHAT THEY SAY IN KARABAGH
		For centuries we have fed it
	      our blood and our bone.
	      For centuries we have swallowed
	      its bread and its stones.
	      Nothing will tear us from this
	      land that we call home.

	AT THE MINAS AVEDISYAN MUSEUM
		A fire like Gorky's
	      (What can be worse?)
	      burning your life and all
	      and all its work?

	      I search your colors
	      trying to find
	      what was so threatening
	      to a proleteriate mind?
		Why were you destroyed?
	      Here is only life and light.
	      Too much freedom
	      not to ignite?

	MARCOS GRIGORYAN
	       You have hardened sand
	     and the cracked earth
	     we used to own
	     to memory's stone.
	       Your alchemy can turn
	     a plate of simple food
	     like Midas, to gold,
	     but gold to feed the soul.
	       Your benediction 
	     is the circle and the cross
	     plus the old sign of eternity
	     whose spin never stops.
	       Yours the hand we bless
	     as it blesses us.

  
--
Poems by DIANA DER-HOVANESSIAN from THE BURNING GLASS (Sheep Meadow
Press, NY) Der-Hovanessian is author of 13 books of her own poetry and
10 of translations that have won many awards including two Fulbright
professorships teaching American poetry in Yerevan.