The Survivor

All this pain is for which of our sins?
~ Catholicos Vazken I, December 1988

In this dream you walk past
the school’s sheared facade;
from their desks the children
call and wave. A teacher
points at a map of Armenia.
The ceilings drop like eyelids.

You wake to another dream
of soot-stained faced around
a fire fueled by broken chairs.
You wish the earth would
swallow the rows of coffins
in the playing field. The living

search for what they want
not to find; their eyes catch
like hooks at your skin.
You should have been the
hand of God reaching into
the school–the children

could have climbed onto
your palm that would hover
over the town until the earth
was still. But instead they
line up to write their names
in the book at heaven’s door.

Nancy Kricorian

EARTHQUAKE MONUMENT

They ask me to be involved.
I send 50 blankets,
100 bars of unscented soap
and 1000 pencils for schoolchildren.
I can’t send my shock.
They ask me to shed tears.
My river overflows.
My dry eyes sigh.
My morning juice sours.
I see double sometimes.
They ask me to spread the word.
I type too fast.
My images are pasted on the past.
My daily trek is vexed.
Memory still consults my mind.
They want a monument.
Spitak and Gumri are still floss
on the mill of no response.
I hew names on the marble of thoughts.
This is too heavy to send.
They wish remembrance.
I name my poems for them.
I light 50,000 beeswax candles
in the church of national history.
My ideas are edged with commemoration.
They say I should listen.
The announcer of 1988 gave the news
loud enough for a century
of survivors and sympathizers.
I heard and continue to understand.

Time to turn from nature’s mannerism, remembering earth is not an enemy; to recommend soil that gobbles seeds and gratifies us with plants; to plant our reprimands and gather the green of their leaves;
to suspend negative moments like dangling participles in a sentence;
to repair the crafts that need new glue, even flour mixed with water;
to repair ourselves and the twitch of face that happens after dearth;
to fill the lanterns outside ourselves with light and craved raves of esteem.

Helene Pilibosian

These are two extraordinary poems by survivors that I thought did a very nice job of conveying the emotions of the disaster, which I think is something that is often overlooked in trying to understand a disaster. In knowing what the victims (and survivors) felt, it gives us as spectators a fuller and deeper understanding of the disaster. It is no longer about the Richter scale and and the death toll and how much money people give, it becomes about the victims. The humanity of the victims really comes out in these two poems, and gives us a deeper sense of the tragedy and a deeper ability to reflect upon, honor, and commemorate those who died.