Some things are indelible,
like India ink, not just on paper
but on the parchment of the soul.
If you are one of the fortunate
the imprint is early etched. I sat
beside him, his well-scarred desk,
the green-shaded lamp, watched him
dip the nib into the black well,
scratch out his Baikar editorials,
his poems, his short stories
in Mesrob Mashtots’ script -
letters of the Armenian alphabet,
exotic, ancient, cryptic. Mashtots,
ascetic Armenian monk, his life’s work
to translate the Bible into the tongue
of his people after a vision, it was said,
where the hand of God revealed the alphabet,
the written word birthed in letters of fire.
Spell my name, hairig, I asked, and with
a flourish of a conductor’s baton he
dipped the pen. Spell “love”, grandpa,
I want to see what it looks like. He smiled
with his eyes, tousled my thick, black hair –
janig (dear one), he whispered.
This poem has appeared in Atlanta Review.
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