JACK HAGOPIAN'S POETRY

IN MEMORY OF THE MILLION

Translated from Armenian by Daniel Janoyan
Glendale, April 27, 1995
 
The spirit of the April Genocide,*
Rustling and blustering
In its metallic language and iron words
Crying triumphantly,
"We are still alive …"

Through the depth of Der Zor**
The wells of the Euphrates,
The sandy oceans,
The valleys of the death,
The unquenched horizons of history,
And from thousand corners this will be heard,
"We are still alive … "

Through lost corpses,
Dried bloods,
Forgotten memories,
And broken thorns,
The disturbed April spirit
Whose million bones transformed into earth
Will scream loudly,
"We will be living eternally …. "

Under every planet,
And from one corner to another,
We will be multiplying in tens and thousands
Through all times to come.
Passing from generation to generation
We shall never die.
WE, indeed WE, have been fed and nourished
From the deserts of DER ZOR.
The diaspora today in its stubborn march
Will be marching along with the most prudent,
The happiest and the greatest Armenian battles,
"We shall multiply … "

Increasing in numbers,
We shall multiply,
One Armenian after another,
Not only to fill up,
To hold and to replace
The deserted vacant places of the April Genocide,
But with our new generation
Numbering tens of thousands
We shall increase immensely in numbers,
We shall reconstruct with our own bare arms
A huge garden of "GREATER and MINOR ARMENIA … "

* THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE is the first genocide of the 20th Century perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 in which ONE AND A HALF MILLION Armenians were massacred. Armenians throughout the world today commemorate April 24th as a martyrs day paying tribute and homage to all those who were killed during the genocide.

** DER ZOR is the desert into which thousands of innocent Armenian civilians were driven and left without food and water. They were tortured, raped, humiliated and let to die during the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

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