IALA X h-pem | Anahit's Legacy by Vladimir Mkrtchian
October 10, 2023
Vladimir Mkrtchian is a sixteen-year-old student attending Wellington C. Mepham High School on Long Island. Mkrtchian writes in English, Armenian, and French and is pursuing a Seal of Biliteracy in the French language. He won several regional and district-wide writing contests, earning an honorable mention at the Walt Whitman Birthplace 2023 Student Poetry Contest, and publication of his works in his school’s literary magazine, Fragments. Currently, he is an assistant teacher at the Holy Martyrs Armenian Language School in Queens, New York—teaching the Armenian language to Nursery students while also writing monthly issues on behalf of the school in the church’s newsletter, Narrec. He continues to write today, sharing his Armenian-influenced works with his teachers, friends, and the district in hopes of spreading awareness and bridging the gap between American and Armenian communities.
Vladimir Mkrtchian's poem "Anahit's Legacy' is one of the winners of the 2023 Young Armenian Poets Awards. Read Vladimir's haunting poem below.
Vladimir Mkrtchian
Age 16
Bellmore, NY, USA
Anahit’s Legacy
After Peter Balakian’s “Head of Anahit/British Museum”
For Anush Apetyan
1
You said anyone could walk in
even with a sword buried underneath
a charade of a chest, past rows
of people, ruins and idols
immortalized in perfect interim clay
skeletons, plated in lush bronze
and dusted in an airy serpentine
Years could unfold into centuries
and wrap history’s carriage as
precise drapery, only to
lose it all in a second
to invade to break
to ravish to rape
2
My head is lost at the crossroads of tradition and change
late July, between the dewy crossfire of
brimmed pots and pans spilling Vardavar water
between the local symphony of the capers
of one soft street cat and another
testy cur, I sat in the apricot tree’s shade
branded with the Kerkhach, my wrist
adorned with Nazar beads tied with a silver cross
3
Who would have seen it coming
the Autumn I left
she sickened into critical condition, every day a reminder:
a beckoning bulletin of another
Armenian, Yazidi, Atheist,
man or woman, dead by proxy;
beheaded, raped, mutilated,
a thousand stones would have been more humane
4
Nestled soundly in the American dream
it all seems so far, I pretend to forget it
through the grandeur played off every church Sunday
every party, every barbecue, every shower
is as good as it once was there
5
But my mind circles back to the lucky
soldier on the 100-dram bus, the way
he sat, legs glued to each other, clad in
dusty military wear as green as the most
tattered mountain greens, the way his
hands gripped space, his arms—nonexistent
6
Today strife like this is only natural; from the myriad of
relics barely stuffed behind the British Museum’s walls
to the postmodern fetishes of ancient culture,
Anahit—who lives in the guise of Aphrodite
next to the corpses of caryatids: a token of a once-great empire
stands there—fragmented—her nose as august as ever
and her gilded air glittered with life and granite
trapped in a glass cage, miles from home
sold for her Hellenic grace, her magnetism, her artistry
but not for the gentle cracks that swallow her face
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