With The Homeless

Translated by Diana Der-Hovanessian

I am at home with the homeless and the mad, those who have lost their laughter and their land,

the orphans, the wanderers, the dispossessed of nationhood, friends, and address, women stripped of modesty and shame and left desolate and maimed,

those whose eyes dimmed looking at death, those with nothing to lose now except breath,

those in doorless prisons in the dark, those charred by fires they did not start– they are my brothers. Let me join my kind in oblivion leaving all memory behind.

In Coming To Terms, Poems by Vahan Derian Ashod Press