Alan Hovhaness: Lament to Ani

Click to hear the audio clip Lament to Ani read by Lola Koundakjian.

I had trusted
In your thousand churches,
In the might of your Christian God,
But now only broken stones
And ruined walls remain,
Perhaps he has vanished
To a distant planet
Of a distant sun
In a distant universe,

But why has he left you
To the cruel jealous
God of the enemy?
Why slay, tearing bone from bone,
Stone from stone?
Cruel and jealous is the
God of strangers,
Terrible the loneliness
Amid ruins.


Alan Hovhaness

This poem has appeared in Ararat Literary Quarterly, Autumn 1966.