Diana Der Hovanessian: Teaching you Armenian

1. 
To understand
the western dialect
you must breathe in
the heavy-air
of the Mediterranean
and eat the pink flesh
of a ripe apricot
while I speak.
If the apricot
is not truly ripe
you will need two.


2. 
The eastern dialect
has nursery care
in greenhouses and
stonehouses.
Its long pale roots
grow so strong
that transplanted anywhere
its flowers change
the passing winds
into pauses
between Armenian songs.


Diana Der Hovanessian
From How to Choose Your Past, Ararat Press, 1978. The poem also appeared in the Christian Science Monitor.

A book and its author: Diana Der Hovanessian and "How to Choose your Past"

Published by Ararat Press, Armenian General Benevolent Union, 1978.

Diana Der Hovanessian: Tell the Armenian story

Tell the Armenian story in

 black and white please. 

We've had enough shades 

of blood and red 

and purple prose. 

We've had enough amber 

sunsets, hennaed tufa, 

enough golden wheat. 

Let's have some rest. 

Tell the Armenian story 

but not the gory past. 

Let it remain buried 

with the roots of poppies 

on our plains. Let the blue 

light of morning and the bright 

greens of Karabagh remain 

our secret. Keep the orange 

flame of Dzidzanapert 

and the yellow city sunsets 

ours alone. Show the pink 

and beige monasteries

and the citrus-shaded birds

all in shades of gray.

Don't show the violet mist

and blue snow of Ararat

nor the aquamarine Sevan

being gilt at sunrise.

Don't tint the apricot trees

with pink evening inks.

No gold or bottled green

in the valleys just silver

cold and bright. We do not

want the heart to break.

We want only light.

This poem has appeared in To Stanley Kunitz, with love from poet friends, for his 96th birthday.
Publisher: Riverdale-on-Hudson, N.Y. : Sheep Meadow Press ; [Hanover, NH] : Distributed by the University Press of New England, ©2002

Diana Der Hovanessian: At the Temple of Zvartnots

Even the thistle is tender this spring.
Its spines and needles draw no blood from the past
where the fallen stone eagle closes black eyes
waiting, waiting for the temple to rise,

waiting for the altars and circular walls,
curious about the god ascending the throne,
anxious for architects who for centuries failed
to duplicate the miracle that stood in this place.

Its first architect impatient for lightning to strike
heard thunder and called it his sign for the site
and Zvartnots rose, Zvartnots rose,
so dazzling beholders praised sight and not source.

But when nature’s hammer again struck,
the ground slipped, earth shook and Zvartnots fell
with stone eagles plummeting down,
clipped wings falling with collapsing walls.

All the wild herbs have new colors this spring
to calm an earth that can thunder and shake
a countryside, splitting open to consume
the miracle of curved walls and dome.

Now that the lightning has blazed and passed,
now that time has blessed the space,
all the stone eagles squint at the skies
waiting  for their wings and the pillars to rise.

*   *   *

Zvartnots was a circular cathedral which was destroyed by a twelfth-century earthquake in Armenia and is now being restored. This poem has appeared on araratmagazine.com.

Diana Der-Hovanessian: Definitions

Trying to warn about Hitler’s

plans for the Jews, Raphael

Lemkin,  linguist and jurist, 

invented the word genocide 

in 1943 describing the

annihilation of the Armenians

in 1915,“a systematic destruction

of a population segment, or

race, by a ruling government.”

Wholesale massacres by Turks

were taught them by their

ancestors, Genghis Khan

and Tamerlane.  In 1895 the word 

Holocaust was used by missionary

Corwin Shattuck to label the 1895

burning of Armenians in the Urfa

cathedral. These fires leveling

churches with Armenians locked

inside, spread to schools and barns.

Then to neighbors. Assyrians

named it Seifo.The Greeks,

the burning of Smyrna.

 The Arabs, Nakba  for catastrophe,

 calamity, disaster.  The Kurds

used the words The Anfal. Africans,

apartheid, gypsies, annihilation,

 the Syrians, intrafada.  The Jews

named the crime by the Nazis, Shoah.

Then  the Balkans called it ethnic

cleansing.  But the present day Turkish

label for two and a half million lost

Armenians: unavoidable wartime casualties.

This poem appears by kind permission of the author

Diana Der-Hovanessian: DAUGHTER

I was the child who swallowed whole
the sight of showmen eating fire,
flying rabbits on piano wire,
every happy ending told,
sure that straw could spin to gold.




I grew older. Gold spun back to straw.
I learned miracles could lie
only in the beholder’s eye.
Stayed jaded until the day I saw
two eyes fill with my old awe.


This poem appears by kind permission of the author

Diana Der-Hovanessian: Crows

The crows and vultures at Der Zor still wait
for Turks to send more food
Vahakn Davtian

But no more food arrives and
the senders indeed deny
they ever sent the crows feed,
or any Armenians died.


These are Turkish bones every-
where, they claim.
How could they be Armenian?
No one’s here with that name.




This poem appears by kind permission of the author

Diana Der-Hovanessian: OPEN POEM

death lies beside each sleeper

that day wakes up

stalks every step

puts down the heel

that pace picks up again

and exhales every breath

except where love breathes in

la mort s’étend près du dormeur

que le jour réveillera

pour s’attacher à ses pas

que la routine reprendra

exhalant l’air qu’il respire

sauf quand l’amour s’y mêlera

Traduit par Sylvie M.  Miller

Diana Der-Hovanessian: The Political Poem

The political poem
is not a geography lesson,
moan of protest, rant, nor
shout heard only once.
It is an echo, echoing forever
It began with man’s first breath
as he struggled to inhale and
exhale by himself.
The political poem is a fact
of life because man is
a political animal by breeding
by being given the power to think.
The beating heart is
the first poem. Poetry and
politics are the auricle and ventricle
chambers of the heart.
The poem starts and stops there
but must address the head
because it is not an end in itself..
It is more than a song of love.
praise of life, mourning of loss.
It calls for change. It insists
on restorations. It affirms dignity.
Although it comes in disguises
both beautiful or sweaty
it needs no invitation, nor
justification. It starts with
the recognition of injustice.
That is the irritation on which
layer after layer of light must be
coated until the political poem
is a vessel of light, catching light,
shedding light.

All this is to explain why the sun
is so hot in Turkey. It is reflected
back in so many grains of
irritant, the dust of so many unburied
Armenian poets, so many poems.
This dust, these grains which winds
blow, blow into the eyes of all the living.


This poem has previously appeared in RAFT.

Diana Der-Hovanessian: NO ONE TATTOOED MY SKIN

or pulled off my face.
No one ripped my belly.
I was not taken to Istanbul
for either harem
or experimental hospital.
No one nailed me on
a cross saying, “Now let
your Jesus save you.”
No one made me servant
or slave.

No one had me crawl
like a dog or grovel
for a piece of bread.

My soul did not wither
or fold its wings choosing
to drown in the Euphrates
rather than bear another day.

But, oh, my sisters,
now that ninety years
have passed and no one
has spoken for you
I spit out words you
swallowed unsaid.



reprinted with permission from Selected Poems, Diana Der-Hovanessian
Sheep Meadow Press, Riverdale-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Diana Der-Hovanessian, New England born poet, was Fulbright professor of American poetry in 1995, and 1999 at Yerevan State University. She was visiting poet in the Mass. schools for 18 years and has led poetry and translating seminars at universities world wide. Author of 22books of poetry and translations, her work has appeared in literary periodicals including Poetry, American Scholar, Nation, Partisan, New York Times, Harpers, etc.

Diana Der-Hovanessian: Not Meeting Mark Gavoor

On the dock at Camp Hayastan
the summer I had gone to teach
the English course on Armenian
poets, I saw you sprawled
on the gray wooden pier. It was
noon and hot. I sighed at
the sight of so many water lilies
blanketing the skin of Uncus Pond.
"You can't pick them. They are
protected," you warned.
Unlike us, I thought. Anyone
who picks these lilies drowns.

But no need to worry. I am not
one who picks anything. Unfortunately
things pick me.

Suddenly you leaped up saying
"Oh, I know you. I hope
you will have a chance to look
at my poems. My name is Mark."

You moved like all the summer
boys I had known in my youth.
You spoke with the voice of all
the mountain poets I had never
heard in our own tongue.

You smiled with the eyes of the son
I would never have. "Mark?
Mark Gavoor?"

"No," you answered and faded into
the noon light. The lilies shrivelled.
Ice formed on Uncus Pond.

Men from Franklin in rough coats cut
it into blocks to pack into straw
on sleighs. Uncus Indians peered
through the trees.

You and I left to cross two continents.
I to say old poems, you to cut them
into new shapes.


Copyright Aspora Press. This poem has appeared in Aspora, volume 1, No 2, Spring 1994.

Diana Der-Hovanessian: Armenian gifts for my daughters

My Hittite nose. Forgive me.
But it comes with our genes,
from the bronze age and before,
with the metallurgist's gift.

Persistence. The legacy
of 43 Nayirian kings who failed
but still passed on
the will to live.

Urartuan skill in smelting iron
and taming horses into leaping stone,
the Phrygian language's secret singing,
Hayassa's open heart and home.

The Lydian joy in riding,
the Scythian bent for growing wheat,
the Caucasian affinity for climbing,
the Luvian capacity to weave.

A Cappodocian apt for building,
a Byzantine eye for colors, shades,
balance from the dome's inventors,
from ancient gods, some older ways

of seeing from Anahid, protector,
from Asdghik, goddess of grace,
and Naneh who advised queens, talents
for laughing at woman's place.

From Mithra, reverence for the sun,
From Anushavan, regard for trees,
Ahriman's awe of time passing,
Meher's humor in all of these.

Green eyes, older than the Hittites
to pass to daughters yet to be.
Energy from one thousand pools
feeding the Euphrates.

Suspicion born in 1915.
Trust that stays with Christianity.
Zesty craziness from Sassoun.
And for Noah's peak, a strange affinity.


From the collection About Time: poems by Diana Der Hovanessian. Used here by kind permission of the author.

Diana Der-Hovanessian: This is for Zarif

who used to draw
in the mud of the water bank
with a stick and weave marvelous
stories for her little boy
in a village called Tadem,

who used to decorate
the tops of pastry with cut outs
of fantastic figures;
this is for Zarif
who did needlework
passably well
and figures faster than any man.

This is for Zarif
who prayed with two hands
and who wrote to her son
that although she could not watch him
while he was away at school
she knew he would want to be
like the other good men in his family
who did not smoke.

This is for that simple woman
who did not teach her son
to be a revolutionary
but when revolution came, hid a gun for him
in the garden, against bad days.

This is for Zarif whom the Turks beat,
asking the whereabouts of that son;
for Zarif who said over and over again
I do no know,
although she did.

This is for Zarif whose arm was smashed
then made raw then broken to pieces
then cut off while she repeated when she waked
she did not know.

This is for one-armed Zarif
who lived through hell;
who lived to see her grandchildren
in another world,
this is for her
who once help my right hand in her left
and never told me what I must do with mine.


From the collection About Time: poems by Diana Der Hovanessian. Used here by kind permission of the author.

A book and its Author: Diana Der-Hovanessian and ABOUT TIME

Ashod Press; 1st edition (November 1987)

Diana Der Hovanessian: Radio Erivan

Since 1915
the walled monastery
in Jerusalem's Old City
(Vank of the Armenian Church)
has been peopled by
families, exiled by Turks,
each in a room but now
comfortably.
In a cell warmed with
books and rugs
you will eat cheese,
drink tea and discuss Keats
and Kierkegaard
with a hospitable priest.
Then at ten, someone will tune
the radio to a band marked in green,
for folk songs from the Caucasus.
Stone walls and books
fade to wind and
your father's voice will
cross the years of
your American childhood.
And suddenly
so far from home
his happy child
will inherit all his tears.


From the collection About Time: poems by Diana Der Hovanessian. Used here by kind permission of the author.

Diana Der-Hovanessian: BREAK IN

I

Sawdust, a stream of litter on the floor,
the door inside the outside door ajar,
the contents of each dining room drawer
emptied, strewn as if a giant had poured
out everything. I ran screaming to call
911, surveying the chaos inside
the bedroom, the lingerie a tide
of silk and nylon flowing to the hall.
"Table silver, all jewelry, an old photo
of my father at four in a village dress,
the only thing his mother saved, pressed
on the inside of a brooch, and old cameo,
my mother's, my great aunt's rings."
Police ask for listings of such things.

II

I gave them the inventory, everything
I could recall, my former husband's war
medals, his silver officer's bars,
my child's first tooth, pearls, my wedding ring.
The detective asked if I'd been robbed before.
I thought of jewels buried in the ground
as Armenian families fled the sound
of shooting, Turks breaking in each door,
my grandmother's gems down to one cameo
sent to America with her older son,
two million relatives lost as one,
art, architecture, poems I'd never know,
everything except a picture in a cameo.
Answered what he wanted, "No."


Copyright Diana Der-Hovanessian
Previously published in American Scholar. Reprinted here by kind permission of the author.

Diana Der-Hovanessian: Shifting the Sun

When your father dies, say the Irish,
you lose your umbrella against bad weather.
May his sun be your light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Welsh,
you sink afoot deeper into the earth.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Canadians,
you run out of excuses.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the French,
you become your own father.
May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Indians,
he comes back as the thunder.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Russians,
he takes your childhood with him.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the English,
you join his club you vowed you wouldn't.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Armenians,
your sun shifts forever.
And you walk in his light.


This poem has appeared in Good Poems: selected by introduced by Garrison Keillor (Editor) , Penguin Books, 2002.