Pamela Vermes, Poet and Scholar

It is difficult to speak of Geza Vermes without also speaking of his wife Pam. Pamela Vermes died on June 10, 1993, at the age of 74.

Pam was the granddaughter of Sidney Dark, long-time editor of the British newspaper Church Times and author of numerous books with titles like If Christ Came to London (1943), The Folly of Anti-Semitism (1939) and Archbishop Davidson and the English Church (1929). Pam inherited his literary skills. In addition to being Geza’s literary collaborator (she was the “literary editor” of Schurer^3d), Pam was a Buber scholar and a poet.

As her own death approached, Pam expressed herself especially movingly about the end of life. At her funeral, the following poem was read, one of her last:

WITH YOU

peering ahead

into the pitchy depths of deadness

where I’ll not be

where I’ll not be me

where I’ll not be me with you

where I’ll not be with my greatly loved

whom I may no longer see

Peering ahead into the pitchy depths

where being perhaps with Him

I’ll nevertheless no longer be me

no longer be me with you.

how shall I not express

reverential happiness

for your being with me now

for my being with you now

o lovely lovely world.