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Son of Armenia

[October 17, 2005]

Knarik Meneshian, a teacher and writer from Glenview, Illinois, first came to Armenia in 1991 to teach English in the village of Jrashen, near Spitak. She and her husband returned in 2002 as AVC volunteers.

Of that visit Meneshian writes, "During our stay in Armenia, my husband and I saw much poverty. It was especially heart-wrenching to see how the extremely poor lived--some in moldy domeeks, some in shacks, and some in apartment dwellings that were not fit for even dogs to live in. We saw young mothers, young men, old men and women, begging in the streets as well as in Gyumri's shuga. We learned what happened to some of the extremely poor girls in that city when they became 14 or 15 years old. Sadly, we saw much poverty amidst the dazzling lights of Yerevan too."

Her poem "Son of Armenia" is a true account of a homeless man who died on a street near Gyumri's Ani District.

Son of Armenia

Past the mountain Aragats,
Beyond fields of cabbage and potatoes,
The mooing of cows, and the call of roosters,
Amidst rocks and stones and dusty roads,
Past twisted scraps of metal and concrete chunks
Heaped on a winding path
Near rushing water,
An ancient church-Marmashen,
Blackened with candle smoke and time,
Stands crumbling
In the coolness of moss
And tall grass
Bowing in the wind near royal tombstones.

The ancient church
Stands vigil still
To the occasional prayers
Murmured
On bended knees
As candles burn
And coins are dropped into a plate.
At times, as in the old days,
Prayers are released to Heaven
On the wings of doves.

And in the nearby city-Gyumri,
On a street
Lined with domeeks
Molded and rusted long ago,
But still called home,
A man is dead.
No candles burn for him.
No prayers are said,
Not even a tear.

Ignored by passersby
In life as in death,
The man,
A son of Armenia,
In tattered clothes,
Lies dead,
Face down
On a littered, crumbling sidewalk,
With only the weeds at his side.
Doves cry from above.

Knarik O. Meneshian
February 2005