The independence of the Republic of Armenia was declared on this day 100 years ago

Artsakh

"We Are Our Mountains"

Land-locked island, stye.
You always turn up

in the same idiot’s
eye. The same idiots

who don't get the most
idiotic thing

about you: You were once
Armenian, you are

Hye–

that is, wherever
you are cut off,

scattered, exiled
and/or broken,

wherever you are disenfranchised,
and/or dismembered,

you do and you do not die. You stay put,
and by staying put

—in your mountains,
as in your mass graves— 

you are re-
     membered,

and you multiply.

May 28, 1918-May 28, 1993

Zareh’s poem, composed for the 75th anniversary of the founding of the first Republic of Armenia, was written during the height of the Nagorno-Karabakh War.