To the Children, 1915

The monastery is filled with wheelbarrows.
In each bed, a sunset dies.

Limbs are fragments multiplied by a century
of Arams and Aghavnees playing
at the foot of apricot trees. Keghams and Silvas.

If we could gather all the souls, the steepest ravine would replenish
the sky until it reached a hemisphere we would
have to invent.

They are all among us, petals shedding, the pull of seasons
promising their return. Eyes and throat, the breath of lambs
in a creeping field.

Manoushags. Nareks.

Their palms unlined, no seer can trace.

The earth would have cradled them,
tucked away.
Or wheelbarrows, delivering them, their bones
precious enough to travel. Instead, there is only rubble
where the mantled cross had fallen.