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The Literary Groong - 07/02/2005

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    NINETY YEARS

    by DIANA DER-HOVANESSIAN 


    and no witnesses left
    except those who were
    small children and not
    burned or smashed against
    the walls, small children
    old enough perhaps to walk
    young enough to be carried
    but old enough to recall
    once there were tables
    where they were fed
    before they had to walk,
    walk, walk, small children
    who had fathers once
    never seen again, grandmothers
    who did not last the walk,
    small children who survived
    deserts, mountains and thirst
    and were never apologized to
    or acknowledged by the world
    that they existed, except by small poems.


--
Diana Der Hovanessian is a Fulbright professor of American literature
at Yerevan State University in 1994 and 1999, she is author of 17
books and has published in American Scholar, Poetry, Harvard Review,
Nation, Paris Review, New Republic, and her poetry is regularly
published in the Christian Science Monitor. She has awards from the
Columbia Translation Center, P.E.N., Writers Union of America, and the
Writers Union of Armenia.

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