Michael E. Stone

  

 

Michael E. Stone, now retired, taught Comparative Religion and Armenian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1966-2007. He grew up in Australia and has lived in Israel since 1960. He studied at Melbourne University and Harvard University. He was a member of the editorial team that published the Dead Sea Scrolls and has had a special interest in Jewish Literature and Thought of the Second Temple period and Armenian Studies. He received the Landau Prize for the Humanities in 2001.

He has published poetry in numerous magazines and e-zines including ARC, Avocet, Byline Magazine, Hazmat Review, King Log, Mandrake Poetry Review, Poetica, Ruah, White Heron, Voices Anthology, and Ararat. He also translates medieval Armenian poetry into English. Most recently, he published the translation of the Adamgirk', a 5,500-line Armenian epic poem on Adam and Eve, with Oxford University Press.

The following works are copyright © 2008. All rights reserved. No distribution or reprinting in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  

Humpty Dumptee

The broken cannot be, like
Humpty Dumptee
made the same again,
like the sea,
that never returns twice
the same
as Heraclitus said.
The obvious we can see,
when our eye is opened
by a Greek with a can-opener,
pointed and dangerous
so sharpening the apple
of the eye-window of souls.
When with super glue we weld
fragments into a whole
shell fragments into an egg,
it is often not quite pear shaped
not symmetrical, smooth,
like a pregnant belly,
but takes a different form.
In welding it changes shape
broken by life restored,
more resistant or less,
but certainly less innocent.
The assymetical gives pleasure,
Mature, deeper balance
of a person taught by life,
eroded by ever changing rivers,
cut away by forces currents,
that chop and change and never
produce external symmetry,
but reach an inner balance,
in its way, more beautiful.

  

Locked Gates

Still, chill air in the street,
empty early morning bare,
high walls, closed gates
flash and unlock so
key-holders may enter
into the palaces. door-keepers
guardians keys passwords,
open and permit ascent
upwards inwards through
doors within doors to
the palace
within palaces
that eye rejoices
which alone can read
the key to place in the lock
the word, the pass code
to open locked gates
in the palaces' heart
the throne room flashes
fiery rivers and crystal.
He is there and not there
and not just there
for ever now.