ARARAT AND YEREVAN
By Michael E. Stone
Over Yerevan Mount Ararat looms at dusk tenebrous, moon shines above its very peak, just like in tourist paintings. Then mountain fades into sky, and darkness is complete.
BLACK MOUNTAINS
By Michael E. Stone
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’ branch grew over Could be climbed from our side and we did.
Near broad silk-worm leaves, and thick trunk branches small purple berries stained us black as the mountains.*
[*] Karabakh means “black mountains”, so called after the mulberry trees planted there under Persian domination for the production of silk.