Bernard Rogers: Identity

Lucine Amara sings
the song of the crane,
her voice haunting as "Taps"
played by an open grave.
An exile leaves Armenia.
For the last time he sees
Ararat cast shadows
on the tableland below,
In tears he begs a crane
for news of the mother country.
He tells his children
tales of their grandparents
in some foreign land.
I listen to this melody
and I though Irish feel
the pain of roots torn up,
and wonder who I am.



Bernard Rogers has taught at Dearborn Community College in Michigan. This poem was published in Ararat, Spring 1983.

Editor -- Lucine Amara is a retired Armenian-American operatic soprano, prima donna of the Metropolitan Opera in New York.