Crown Prince Ras Tafari brought the children
of Arba Lijoch out of the desert —
Orphans who became Ethiopian,
who sang of the Metz Yeghern, the Great Hurt;
composed, “Marsh Teferi,” the first music
Marcus Garvey heard while in audience.
I, too, have heard of, “Natural mystic
blowing/ through the air,” Ararat’s fragrance
in each word. I’m told, Babylon crashing.
Where in Kingston is the orchestral sound
of Addis Ababa? — I listen — I
listen, but the dance halls tell me nothing.
The ghosts of Van hang low in the background.
Who will sing their song? Tell their prophesy?
Notes:
Arba Lijoch were a group of forty Armenian orphans who had escaped from the 1915 atrocities in Turkey, and were afterwards adopted by Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia. He had met them while visiting the Armenian monastery in Jerusalem; they impressed him so much that he obtained permission from the head of the Armenian church, the Catholicos, to adopt and bring them to Ethiopia, where he then arranged for them to receive musical instruction. The Arba Lijoch arrived in the capital city, Addis Ababa, in 1924, and along with their conductor, Kevork Nalbandian, became the first official orchestra of the nation. Nalbandian also composed the music for Marsh Teferi (words by Yoftehé Negusé), which was the Imperial National Anthem from 1930 to 1974. Metz Yeghern is the Armenian word for their Great Calamity, their genocide.
I’m unable to attend this but anyone in the Cambridge-area please take lots of photos for me. This is taken from the ArmenianWeekly:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—On Sept. 21, an evening of poetry, titled “Poetry of Memory, an Evening in Solidarity with Armenia,” will feature readings by renowned Armenian writers Diana Der-Hovanessian, Peter Balakian, and Krikor Der Hohannesian.
The event is organized by the distinguished Nigerian poet and Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College, Ifeanyi Menkiti, the owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, the oldest continuing poetry bookstore in the U.S. and a landmark for poets. The event will take place at the Cambridge Public Library (Main Branch), located at 449 Broadway in Cambridge, from 6:30-8:30 p.m.
During the night a cold mountain rain fell, turning the dusty cobblestones of Atabekyan Street into a long, quaggy blotch, so that when the three-legged dog with the pepper-stump and heavy teats hobbled over to the front gate to meet the young foreigner once he finally staggered out into the chill morning air, skull throbbing with a grievous hang-over his neighbors had good-willingly inflicted upon him the night before, she was already soaked up to her haunches in mud.
Despite the protests of his landlady he had been leaving out dishes of cold cuts bought at the outdoor shuka-market for the dog, for he figured that she must have pups hidden away somewhere in the hollows of the nearby rubble that was all that was left of the neighborhood, house-fronts spilling out into the street in huge piles of pink stones.
“Ah, Mama Shun, dear, stay warm while I’m gone,” he said, bending down to pet her worn nape, hastily brushing away the fleas that rose up in a black mist to coat his hand.
Far down the earthquake-rippled street the local children were out, shrieking, playing some sort of game of tag. He knew most of their names — Mayranush, Little Aram, Jbduhi, Takavor, Arpi, Isahag — and, off to one side, the small twisted girl that the rest of them shunned, Lusine-jan. She wavered in the morning air with her shaven skull and wide, unblinking eyes as the others kicked up spurts of mud in the numerous potholes. Unlike the others, in their summer dresses and raffish vests, Lusine was clothed for the on-coming winter, with heavy tights and a quilted, stained skirt. Like the three-legged dog she moved slowly through the street, weirdly jerkily, her downcast eyes avoiding his eyes as he passed by.
