Letter 26: We’re in March, don’t leave us alone!
Letter 26: We’re in March, don’t leave us alone!
Saturday, March-07-2009 to April-02-09
Here again, hanging on the steep slopes of our mountains,
In the middle of our gardens devastated by the elements provoked by climate change,
We do what the unemployed do, what prisoners do,
We cultivate hope!
We’re a young country with a long history, but have become less smart.
The IMF and the WB still let us borrow and mortgage our children’s future!
Here, on the steps to our house, where the smoke rises
From last fall’s leftover leaves and the street garbage
We can’t breathe. I say, better not to be able to breathe from that than from the smoke of the guns….
But spring is in the air, our apricots have blossomed before the cherries and I hear the buzz of the bees who come from far (Vardkes has left his beehives elsewhere this year). The local black-flies are out, they bother everybody else for 10 days, but they don’t seem to like Canadian-Armenian blood.
Everyone talks of the “Jknazham” (The Economic Crisis) and wants to know how it affects us in Canada). Some people have lost their home. Others who lived beyond their means, those who borrowed money for consumer goods rather than investment will sell their car, their furniture.
Ararat is still there, shining from our window. We can always count on him, whether we see him or not.
Our living room is without its beautiful wooden floor. It was infected by wood borers and I had asked Vardkes to take it away and burn it last winter, but I had left him with the new wood to prepare for installation upon my arrival. He broke his arm in an accident and he now walks around, frustrated, in pain, unemployed, not from lack of work, no insurance except his family.
Had the policeman, who used his club to beat-up peaceful opposition demonstrators a year ago, in March, contemplated his victims’ faces and reflected upon what he was doing, he may have remembered the faces of his grand-parents during the “Metsn Yeghern”, he may have set aside the might of the club, the might of the gun.
This is not the way to build a country!
Alone, we are alone up to our elbows, but for the rainbows that visit us every once and then;
We know we have brothers and sisters beyond these rainbows.
Good brothers and sisters. They love us.
They look at us and rain Manna on us from time to time; then they say:
Why can’t they solve their …. But can’t finish their sentence, for they don’t know what hit us.
Don’t leave us alone! Don’t leave us !
Antoine S. Terjanian
Went there to attract rainbows
to read all my letters from Armenia, open http://lettersfromArmenia.blogspot.com
Saturday, March-07-2009 to April-02-09
Here again, hanging on the steep slopes of our mountains,
In the middle of our gardens devastated by the elements provoked by climate change,
We do what the unemployed do, what prisoners do,
We cultivate hope!
We’re a young country with a long history, but have become less smart.
The IMF and the WB still let us borrow and mortgage our children’s future!
Here, on the steps to our house, where the smoke rises
From last fall’s leftover leaves and the street garbage
We can’t breathe. I say, better not to be able to breathe from that than from the smoke of the guns….
But spring is in the air, our apricots have blossomed before the cherries and I hear the buzz of the bees who come from far (Vardkes has left his beehives elsewhere this year). The local black-flies are out, they bother everybody else for 10 days, but they don’t seem to like Canadian-Armenian blood.
Everyone talks of the “Jknazham” (The Economic Crisis) and wants to know how it affects us in Canada). Some people have lost their home. Others who lived beyond their means, those who borrowed money for consumer goods rather than investment will sell their car, their furniture.
Ararat is still there, shining from our window. We can always count on him, whether we see him or not.
Our living room is without its beautiful wooden floor. It was infected by wood borers and I had asked Vardkes to take it away and burn it last winter, but I had left him with the new wood to prepare for installation upon my arrival. He broke his arm in an accident and he now walks around, frustrated, in pain, unemployed, not from lack of work, no insurance except his family.
Had the policeman, who used his club to beat-up peaceful opposition demonstrators a year ago, in March, contemplated his victims’ faces and reflected upon what he was doing, he may have remembered the faces of his grand-parents during the “Metsn Yeghern”, he may have set aside the might of the club, the might of the gun.
This is not the way to build a country!
Alone, we are alone up to our elbows, but for the rainbows that visit us every once and then;
We know we have brothers and sisters beyond these rainbows.
Good brothers and sisters. They love us.
They look at us and rain Manna on us from time to time; then they say:
Why can’t they solve their …. But can’t finish their sentence, for they don’t know what hit us.
Don’t leave us alone! Don’t leave us !
Antoine S. Terjanian
Went there to attract rainbows
to read all my letters from Armenia, open http://lettersfromArmenia.blogspot.com