Not Bread
by Diana Der-Hovanessian
“What can you do with poems? They are not bread.” Vahan Tekeyan
No, not bread.
But bread or seed
will leave the caged bird starved
when sky is what he needs.
And bread for us became,
in times of loss,
more than flour and leavening
stamped with the cross.
Not bread, not bread,
but pieces of the sky.
What they did
was help us fly.
Copyright © 1990 by Diana Der-Hovanessian.
Reprinted from Songs of Bread, Songs of Salt by Diana Der-Hovanessian.
New York: Ashod Press, 1990.
