DESTINY

	By Raymond B. Kupelian

	From an early age
	I silently carried
	My burden of lead
	Attached to my wings
	As an omen of destiny
	Branded on my forehead
	And also on my soul...

	I was so often 
	Plucked of my feathers
	By those mortals
	Who refrained my attempts
	For a better life
	They have prevented
	My willful fly
	In the blue sky
	And my journey
	To the distant oceans
	To the distant shores...

	But after every fall
	And plucking
	After every attempt 
	Of the gravity of lead's 
	Pulling me down into ravines
	There was ascension
	There was slender 
	And soaring of wings
	The will and the joy
	Of conquering 
	New horizon
	And flying freely
	In the open skies
	As celebration
	For being strong
	For being alive ...


--
Raymond B. Kupelian is a recognized author in the Diaspora as well as
in Armenia, where a sampling of his short stories and latest two
novels have been published. Now in his sixties, Mr. Kupelian has lived
in Liberia and Sierra Leone for more than twenty years.  His African
short stories have been translated into English and Russian.

Addendum:

Today, as Liberia and Sierra Leone are suddenly in the world's
political focus, it's timely to expand on Mr. Kupelian's speciality
here:

With his first three short-story volumes, Kupelian portrays the life
and captured the hope and despair of newly independent countries in
West Africa. He penetrated into the hidden secret of its virgin
forests, disclosing the superstition and primitive thinking of the
natives.

His ninth novel, ` The Decadence', portrays the rise and fall of
African nationalism, the tortures of their dreams, the selfishness of
black leadership and the unavoidable chaos and carnage there after.

In Kupelian's writings, the Africans are the main characters and the
heroes of all his stories or novels. He penetrates into the every day
life and souls of the countryman from all categories of life: from the
president to government employees and the mere domestic helper to the
underage murderer, from illicit diamond dealer to sand-sand boys, from
the primitive fishermen to sophisticated ancient Greek language
scholar and golf club president. His `African Symphony' brings to
surface the complicated interracial relations, prejudices and hatred
of people living under the same roof or the same tropical sky. These
short stories which were written in the seventies have kept their
freshness, and local coloring and essence.