Michael E. Stone: Ambert’s Soft succor

Ambert, round towers
black fortress remains
battlements cast down
dressed stones scattered
chunks broken off walls

    gaping breaches
And parts still standing.

And she
helped me softly,
down to there,
by there,
beyond there,
and back.

September 2021

Michael Stone: Six Glimpses

Entering the Arpa Valley


A faded sign “BISTRO”


Comley with thick shins and petite feet in blue shoes
She was selling white yoghurt by the road.


A poplar in a roadside meadow,
its leaves straining south to follow the wind,
Like a girl's long hair.


An old car picking its way down a very steep track,
all ruts and roots and rocks.


Billows of hill and deep gulches cleavage,
hills smoothed into green-yellow waves,
lakes of light green in the valleys,
houses below, monopoly pieces.


A village drowning in greenery
Yellow humps of harvested hay rolled up
Ingathered fields inlaid into the hills




Michael E. Stone, Vayots Dzor 2016

Michael Stone's contribution to our Call for Poems on the topic of epidemics, illness, medicine, death and healing

Michael E. Stone, an emeritus professor of Armenology in Jerusalem, Israel, has shared this original work. APP thanks him.

Cedared Memory

Do ancient dryads
still live, that knew
the cedars of Lebanon
three millennia gone?

In Solomon’s kingdom
Hiram’s craftsmen helped
fashion the great beams
for his House of Cedar.

My mother had a cedar chest,
wooden, red, deep polished,
its top swung on brass hinges.

She kept the woolen blankets
folded deep in it, for cedar
stops mold, kills moths.

“it’s worth cedaring.”
they would declare,
of a poet’s pleasing work,
in ancient Rome.

ephemeral beside
ancient cedars,
our memories,
live on and on,

enshrined in flesh,
on stone and on clay,
on leather and paper,
in minds and in souls,

carry us back to before
that small seedling cedar
peeped through the topsoil.

”And you shall tell your child,”
the ancient words demand.
Be links in the chain,
write, remember, retell.

Michael Stone: Halcyon Days

Halcyon days,
purple days,
with blue
days of my woe.

Chalk cliffs
fruit trees,
church on a hill.
Neolithic stone fire circle,
Hrazdan gorge.
           Kotayk.
Cows
yellow grassed hills
villages
stone formations.


Michael E. Stone, Aghveran, Fall 2012

Michael E. Stone: In a Bower

Poets once wrote

about bowers.

I don't believe

we ever sat in one

except in Armenia

at the foot of Mt. Aragatz.

That bower needed a coat of paint,

but there vines twined overhead

in the midst of

a half dried up orchard

at the tail end of summer

of our visit

We ate there.

The food was fresh,

and we drank Armenian beer.

A time of ending

that included

a starched cloth,

a gleaming white canvas for

a feast of colours —

eggplant purple

salad green and red

white cheese and

watermelon's sweet heart,

That summer ended

in that bower.

Summer 2015

Michael E. Stone: Winter in Armenia

The land has put on winter.
The poplars are naked.
Rounded mountain tops
snow white,
peek above
black ploughed fields
on rolling hills.

Scattered obsidian glints
catch the low western sun,
sparkle like Christmas lights,
on and off, on and off,
as the road winds.

The spirit of mist
descends
far off.


Michael E. Stone

Michael E. Stone: April 2015 in Yerevan

It was a mixed grill of

Genocide centennial,

manuscripts, friends,

my glad thanks to those

lovers of the treasures

that are hand-written

painted manuscripts, 

who welcomed

me from the first day 

for I share that love.

Those treasures of beauty,

of language, art, and craft

enfold within the power 

for a mighty transmutation

of victims into the bearers,

witnesses and lovers

of that history and beauty,

those songs and tales,

that the singers of this time

and the next will turn 

from unbearable pain 

into the imperative of life, 

of living, of breathing,

The pain of the past,

demands life, 

new birth.

Michael Stone: Day’s Start in Yerevan

The pavement is wet from the hose The sun gets through the barriers outer window, bars, inner window The day’s potential is the day’s being in those morning hours when the odd car fumes by the neighbour’s dog barks, a father upbraids a little girl, and the made-up pretty girls mince by on heels too high for human feet. Fall 2010

Michael E. Stone: Massis

On the peak of Massis,

Under snow, cloud-crowned,
since antiquity
sits a spirit of past-present,
guarding the gopher wood,
and pitch of the Ark.

Life savers, life givers
Noah and his unnamed wife,
Mother of Seed, to plant
at its foot, in Ararat plain.

Massis was clear this morning
Yesterday clouds garlanded it,

The poet speaks of a cart,
Sailing down from its peak
to Jerusalem, bearing
salvation.

Symbols well-worn
for good reason.
Revived life givers,
Always majesty.


September 2013

Michael E. Stone: In Dilijan

Do I have anything to say

these days?

Long together and

now apart, gone.

My state so common

that each lives it

yet mine is unique -- it’s mine,

and worthy of  a poem

or like a stye in the eye,

mine and commonplace,

but mine.

I eat

dark red royal basilicum,

regal leaves, kingly flavor,

morosely.

In Dilijan

21-22 September, 2013

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.

Michael E. Stone: Birds of Paradise

A parchment lampshade,

adorned with a peacock

preening between

two fruit trees

as in the Garden.

Immortality's symbol,

Paradise bird,

tail fanned, with Cherub eyes,

God's eyes over all the earth.

The vine meanders through the mosaic,

tracing medallions, embracing

birds in its grape-heavy branches,

around pomegranates—Eden's fruit.

At the vine's stock a bird in a cage,

wings flutter in body's prison.

Two peacock fans frame the base

eying the blind soul’s struggle.

Will the soul learn it's caged?

Will it break free, soar,

wing up away on high,

through the spheres and

beyond the heavens?

Michael E. Stone

This poem is inspired by the Bird Mosaic in Jerusalem