Armenia: The Deathless Tree

Published in The Literary Groong, the Armenia Tree Project website, and elsewhere.

http://groong.usc.edu/tlg/tlg-20070520.html

http://www.armeniatree.org/environews/enews_garabed_051907.htm

ARMENIA: The Deathless Tree

By C.K. Garabed

The seeds had been planted upon the peaks of Ararat by Noah the progenitor.

The waters of the Tigris and Euphrates nourished the roots of the seedling tree.

The trunk grew modestly at first and bent with the winds of change.

But sturdily it grew until it became a cordon of rings so mighty that not the Parthians, nor the Assyrians, nor even the Romans could uproot the tree.

The natural enemies of Armenia could but prune the branches and thus invigorate the trunk and foster new growth.

They did not know that what they did was far beyond the greatest care they could bestow by husbandry.

Then came the more extensive pruning of the Turks and they cut deep!

They slashed and hacked and forbade new growth.

They cut back more and more until the final stroke that in one blow shore off the limbs and felled the mighty trunk.

But...and this the greatest qualification, they failed to kill the roots.

It could not think and it could not act, But Armenia's roots remained intact.

And now those roots have raised a trunk and the trunk is bearing limbs.

Those limbs will flower one day and the blossoms will replenish the earth and the deathless tree will have been restored.

(From the Preface `Dedication to my Father's Homeland' to "The Advent of the Superman and Other Presentiments" Copyright ©1985 by C.K. Garabed).