Perla Kantarjian: It’s May in Lebanon and the Figs Are Deciding on Their Sweetness

The loquats have ripened, the sea is showing off.
If you’ve been here you’ll know that something
in the air keeps us more alive than dead, breathing
in a perpetual summer, breathing out dates and names.
But the season cannot cover the killing
that the ceasefire forgot to stop.
I tried to enter summer, I did.
I bought the sandals. I washed the white dress.
My mind goes instead to the 2659 of us killed in the villages,
in the hospitals, in the cars since March,
since the second war, the third, I have lost count,
who would have been dipping janerek in salt too now,
their fingers stained purple from the mulberries,
their summer clothes still folded, waiting to be wrong.

– Perla Kantarjian

Alan Whitehorn: Siroun's Lament

In a remote Anatolian field somewhere that I do not know;

upon unmarked graves of the dead, I hope flowers do grow.

In the beginning, only suffering and endless tears were sown,

but as decades passed, love and understanding have also grown.

From one small child standing helpless and ever so frail,

and, despite a nation refusing to admit the ghastly tale,

a family somehow has been nurtured with love and respect,

and within the diaspora, a better life has come to expect.

We are children and grandchildren of the genocide,

but are now citizens of the world, we do decide.

We cannot ignore other peoples’ suffering and pain,

whether amidst a remote desert or tropical rain.

The children of the genocide do live;

most recover, and some even forgive.

But we shall never forget

the torment that was beget

in the arid, Anatolian plain

where the tears turned to rain.