“If You’re Walking For A Long Time, You Can’t Think About Tomorrow. If You’re Walking For A Long

“If you’re walking for a long time, You can’t think about tomorrow. If you’re walking for a long time, keep your eyes down and don’t falter. Wolves are growling in the mountains, they will come if you’re not wise. Wolves are growling by the roadside, and robbers prowling in the trees. One eye open when you’re sleeping, the night has many arms that touch you. One eye open when you’re waking, sometimes day itself can snatch you. If you dream of grapes in the arbor, you’ll wake up with stones for eyes. If you dreams of rivers winding, there’ll be gravel where you lie. And when your father falls behind, don’t cry, there’s always someone else. And when your mother falls behind, don’t cry, and then, there’s no one else. Never ask where you are going, the wind might blow your ashes there Never also where you are going, The wind is blowing everywhere.”

—

“Children’s Lullaby,” from So I Will Tell The Ground, a book of poetry by Egyptian-Armenian Gregory Djanikian

Cited along the poem, the testimony of “an Armenian child-survivor of a deportation, 1915”

About this time, Turkish or Kurdish women would come and take children away. Realizing that there was nothing but death facing us…my mother gave me to them. So these two women held my hand and took me away.