BY NOW

By Diana Der-Hovanessian
for the 90th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide by the Turks

By now we should have finished grieving.
By now we should have found some peace.

By now there should have been atonement
and the pain slightly eased.

By now witnesses are almost gone.
And the lies about our bones believed.

By now they thought we would be forgotten.
and our blood dried to dust and blown.

By now they thought the smoke and fire
would be either greened or stone.

By now they thought our stolen children
would have all turned into Turks.

By now they thought the aid money
sent back to America would do its work

in changing truth to lies:
that we were never here alive.

By now they thought the last survivors
and their children would be in graves.

They didn’t count on our children’s children
even angrier, and more outraged.

—
Diana Der Hovanessian is a Fulbright professor of American literature
at Yerevan State University in 1994 and 1999, she is author of 17
books and has published in American Scholar, Poetry, Harvard Review,
Nation, Paris Review, New Republic, and her poetry is regularly
published in the Christian Science Monitor. She has awards from the
Columbia Translation Center, P.E.N., Writers Union of America, and the
Writers Union of Armenia.