Michael E. Stone: BLACK MOUNTAINS

Here we go round the mulberry bush
So quoth T.S. Eliot
but it's a tree, not a bush,
grand, spreading, broad-leafed.

At the bottom of the garden
the neighbours' mulberry tree
could be climbed from our side
and we did. It had

broad silk-worm leaves,
thick trunk and branches
and small purple berries
that stained us
black as the mountains
of Karabakh.*


*Named “black mountains” for the abundant mulberry trees.