Pimple popping
Lathered deodorant
Awkward tampons
Hair in unwanted places
Drunken nights
Failed hangover cures
Flunked classes
Broken hearts
First kisses and first times
Rebounds
Hookups
Hickeys
Rushes of frustration
These are all
unglamorous occasions
Of a not so florescent
Adolescence

The storms are pounding
Destruction is rampant
No end seems in sight.
The day is endless
The night never ending
Will it ever, ever be right?

Lightning crashes
Winds are swirling
Torrents of water fall down.
The earth is shaking
The shelter is breaking
Thunderous sound resound.


Above the storm
the Calm prevails
Overlooking the turmoil below.
Awaiting the return
of order again
That Peace and Calm bestow.


Then it is over...

No more pounding
Silence, beautiful silence
Comes whispering in the ears.
The Earth becomes firm
The Sun is still shining
It dries up all the tears.

Through the debris
New hopes arise
Covering the scars below.
Growing stronger, stronger
As strength rebounds
Renewed by the seeds we sow.

Repairing the damage
Replacing the lost
Moving forward with or without.
Finding Hope in the future
as Faith reaches upward
Redeeming Love without a doubt.

--------------------------------
When the storms of life
Cause turmoil and strife,
The Son dries all my tears.
When all seemed lost
I counted the cost
Turned over all my fears.

I am surviving.
I am stronger still.

Sheer passion, laden layers after
dense layers was the lake,deep blue,
His hidden heart was all aflame,
in anticipation of her, his hurricane,
the wildest girl in town, hard to get,
yet he acts placid on the surface
one'd see just gently billowing waves.

The hurricane has never known any
such guile,  hiding passion.Her eyes
wide and *****, flashing lightening,
cloudy hair disheveled and flying
she comes heavily down on her passive lover.
rebounds to come back with more force
that'd tell how intense her passion runs,
churning water goes up in a swirl and
dance with her passion,how spectacular
is their union, sky and earth look on
with bated breath, this ebullient *******.

Just inches below the ground
but must be behind the sight
sow the seed for a tree in return.

Deepening down the bottom of the sea
nor lying on the ground dropping off the sky
merely dipping into some foots long body  
the soul springs a life.

Take it on the run then should the sky
or earth bends giving a flatten lid.
Even then can it prevent
the soul when rebounds with a life indeed?

An inside scoop, a math, never surfaces
neither in sky nor on Earth, a measured deep,  
always behind the eyes but life maker indeed.

Now swarthy Summer, by rude health embrowned,
    Precedence takes of rosy fingered Spring;
And laughing Joy, with wild flowers prank’d, and crown’d,
    A wild and giddy thing,
And Health robust, from every care unbound,
    Come on the zephyr’s wing,
      And cheer the toiling clown.

  Happy as holiday-enjoying face,
    Loud tongued, and “merry as a marriage bell,”
Thy lightsome step sheds joy in every place;
    And where the troubled dwell,
Thy witching charms wean them of half their cares;
    And from thy sunny spell,
      They greet joy unawares.

  Then with thy sultry locks all loose and rude,
    And mantle laced with gems of garish light,
Come as of wont; for I would fain intrude,
    And in the world’s despite,
Share the rude wealth that thy own heart beguiles;
    If haply so I might
      Win pleasure from thy smiles.

  Me not the noise of brawling pleasure cheers,
    In nightly revels or in city streets;
But joys which soothe, and not distract the ears,
    That one at leisure meets
In the green woods, and meadows summer-shorn,
    Or fields, where bee-fly greets
      The ear with mellow horn.

  The green-swathed grasshopper, on treble pipe,
    Sings there, and dances, in mad-hearted pranks;
There bees go courting every flower that’s ripe,
    On baulks and sunny banks;
And droning dragon-fly, on rude bassoon,
    Attempts to give God thanks
      In no discordant tune.

  The speckled thrush, by self-delight embued,
    There sings unto himself for joy’s amends,
And drinks the honey dew of solitude.
    There Happiness attends
With ****** Joy until the heart o’erflow,
    Of which the world’s rude friends,
      Nought heeding, nothing know.

  There the gay river, laughing as it goes,
    Plashes with easy wave its flaggy sides,
And to the calm of heart, in calmness shows
    What pleasure there abides,
To trace its sedgy banks, from trouble free:
    Spots Solitude provides
      To muse, and happy be.

  There ruminating ’neath some pleasant bush,
    On sweet silk grass I stretch me at mine ease,
Where I can pillow on the yielding rush;
    And, acting as I please,
Drop into pleasant dreams; or musing lie,
    Mark the wind-shaken trees,
      And cloud-betravelled sky.

  There think me how some barter joy for care,
    And waste life’s summer-health in riot rude,
Of nature, nor of nature’s sweets aware.
    When passions vain intrude,
These, by calm musings, softened are and still;
    And the heart’s better mood
      Feels sick of doing ill.

  There I can live, and at my leisure seek
    Joys far from cold restraints—not fearing pride—
Free as the winds, that breathe upon my cheek
    Rude health, so long denied.
Here poor Integrity can sit at ease,
    And list self-satisfied
      The song of honey-bees.

  The green lane now I traverse, where it goes
    Nought guessing, till some sudden turn espies
Rude batter’d finger post, that stooping shows
    Where the snug mystery lies;
And then a mossy spire, with ivy crown,
    Cheers up the short surprise,
      And shows a peeping town.

  I see the wild flowers, in their summer morn
    Of beauty, feeding on joy’s luscious hours;
The gay convolvulus, wreathing round the thorn,
    Agape for honey showers;
And slender kingcup, burnished with the dew
    Of morning’s early hours,
      Like gold yminted new.

  And mark by rustic bridge, o’er shallow stream,
    Cow-tending boy, to toil unreconciled,
Absorbed as in some vagrant summer dream;
    Who now, in gestures wild,
Starts dancing to his shadow on the wall,
    Feeling self-gratified,
      Nor fearing human thrall.

  Or thread the sunny valley laced with streams,
    Or forests rude, and the o’ershadow’d brims
Of simple ponds, where idle shepherd dreams,
    Stretching his listless limbs;
Or trace hay-scented meadows, smooth and long,
    Where joy’s wild impulse swims
      In one continued song.

  I love at early morn, from new mown swath,
    To see the startled frog his route pursue;
To mark while, leaping o’er the dripping path,
    His bright sides scatter dew,
The early lark that from its bustle flies,
    To hail his matin new;
      And watch him to the skies.

  To note on hedgerow baulks, in moisture sprent,
    The jetty snail creep from the mossy thorn,
With earnest heed, and tremulous intent,
    Frail brother of the morn,
That from the tiny bent’s dew-misted leaves
    Withdraws his timid horn,
      And fearful vision weaves.

  Or swallow heed on smoke-tanned chimney top,
    Wont to be first unsealing Morning’s eye,
Ere yet the bee hath gleaned one wayward drop
    Of honey on his thigh;
To see him seek morn’s airy couch to sing,
    Until the golden sky
      Bepaint his russet wing.

  Or sauntering boy by tanning corn to spy,
    With clapping noise to startle birds away,
And hear him bawl to every passer by
    To know the hour of day;
While the uncradled breezes, fresh and strong,
    With waking blossoms play,
      And breathe Æolian song.

  I love the south-west wind, or low or loud,
    And not the less when sudden drops of rain
Moisten my glowing cheek from ebon cloud,
    Threatening soft showers again,
That over lands new ploughed and meadow grounds,
    Summer’s sweet breath unchain,
      And wake harmonious sounds.

  Rich music breathes in Summer’s every sound;
    And in her harmony of varied greens,
Woods, meadows, hedge-rows, corn-fields, all around
    Much beauty intervenes,
Filling with harmony the ear and eye;
    While o’er the mingling scenes
      Far spreads the laughing sky.

  See, how the wind-enamoured aspen leaves
    Turn up their silver lining to the sun!
And hark! the rustling noise, that oft deceives,
    And makes the sheep-boy run:
The sound so mimics fast-approaching showers,
    He thinks the rain’s begun,
      And hastes to sheltering bowers.

  But now the evening curdles dank and grey,
    Changing her watchet hue for sombre ****;
And moping owls, to close the lids of day,
    On drowsy wing proceed;
While chickering crickets, tremulous and long,
    Light’s farewell inly heed,
      And give it parting song.

  The pranking bat its flighty circlet makes;
    The glow-worm burnishes its lamp anew;
O’er meadows dew-besprent, the beetle wakes
    Inquiries ever new,
Teazing each passing ear with murmurs vain,
    As wanting to pursue
      His homeward path again.

  Hark! ’tis the melody of distant bells
    That on the wind with pleasing hum rebounds
By fitful starts, then musically swells
    O’er the dim stilly grounds;
While on the meadow-bridge the pausing boy
    Listens the mellow sounds,
      And hums in vacant joy.

  Now homeward-bound, the hedger bundles round
    His evening ******, and with every stride
His leathern doublet leaves a rustling sound,
    Till silly sheep beside
His path start tremulous, and once again
    Look back dissatisfied,
      And scour the dewy plain.

  How sweet the soothing calmness that distills
    O’er the heart’s every sense its ****** dews,
In meek-eyed moods and ever balmy trills!
    That softens and subdues,
With gentle Quiet’s bland and sober train,
    Which dreamy eve renews
      In many a mellow strain!

  I love to walk the fields, they are to me
    A legacy no evil can destroy;
They, like a spell, set every rapture free
    That cheer’d me when a boy.
Play—pastime—all Time’s blotting pen conceal’d,
    Comes like a new-born joy,
      To greet me in the field.

  For Nature’s objects ever harmonize
    With emulous Taste, that ****** deed annoys;
Which loves in pensive moods to sympathize,
    And meet vibrating joys
O’er Nature’s pleasing things; nor slighting, deems
    Pastimes, the Muse employs,
      Vain and obtrusive themes.

My most popular poems on the Internet

A number of my poems and translations have gone viral, according to Google, and some have been copied onto hundreds to thousands of web pages. That’s a lot of cutting and pasting! The results below are the results returned by Google at the time I did the searches.



This original epigram returns more than 37,000 results:

Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.



This Sappho translation has more than 3,500 results:

Sappho, fragment 42
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eros harrows my heart:
wild winds whipping desolate mountains
uprooting oaks.



This Sappho translation has more than 1,700 results:

Sappho, fragment 155
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A short revealing frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!



This Bertolt Brecht translation has more than 1,500 results:

The Burning of the Books
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When the Regime
commanded the unlawful books to be burned,
teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires.

Then a banished writer, one of the best,
scanning the list of excommunicated texts,
became enraged: he’d been excluded!

He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath,
to write fiery letters to the incompetents in power―
Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen―
Haven’t I always reported the truth?
Now here you are, treating me like a liar!
Burn me!



This poem returns nearly 1,500 results for the first line:

Something
―for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba
by Michael R. Burch

Something inescapable is lost―
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.

Something uncapturable is gone―
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.

Something unforgettable is past―
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
which finality swept into a corner, where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.

NOTE: This is, I think, the first poem I wrote which didn’t rhyme, and the only one for quite some time. I consider one of the best of my early poems; it was written in my late teens.



This original poem has over 1,300 results:

Bible Libel
by Michael R. Burch

If God
is good,
half the Bible
is libel.

This may be the first poem I wrote. I read the Bible from cover to cover at age 11, and it was a traumatic experience. But I can’t remember if I wrote the epigram then, or came up with it later. In any case, it was probably written between age 11 and 13, or thereabouts.



My translation of Robert Burns’ “To a Mouse” returns over 1,300 results. It’s a bit long for this page but can be found online with a Google search like: Michael R. Burch Robert Burns translations.



This Glaucus translation returns more than 1,000 results:

Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gulls in their high, lonely circuits may tell.
―Michael R. Burch, after Glaucus



This Yamaguchi Seishi translation returns over 1,000 results:

Grasses wilt:
the braking locomotive
grinds to a halt
―Yamaguchi Seishi, loose translation by Michael R. Burch



This original poem has more than 1,000 results:

Frail Envelope of Flesh
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers and children of Gaza

Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon’s table
with anguished eyes
like your mother’s eyes
and a heartbeat weak, unstable...

Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this―
your tiny hand
in your mother’s hand
for a last bewildered kiss...

Brief mayfly of a child,
to live two artless years!
Now your mother’s lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her Tears...

Note: The phrase "frail envelope of flesh" was one of my first encounters with the power of poetry, although I read it in a superhero comic book as a young boy (I forget which one). More than thirty years later, the line kept popping into my head, so I wrote this poem. I have dedicated it to the mothers and children of Gaza and the Nakba. The word Nakba is Arabic for "Catastrophe."



This poem won a big Penguin Books (UK) Valentine poetry contest and returns over 800 results for the first line:

Mother’s Smile
by Michael R. Burch

for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

There never was a fonder smile
than mother’s smile, no softer touch
than mother’s touch. So sleep awhile
and know she loves you more than “much.”

So more than “much,” much more than “all.”
Though tender words, these do not speak
of love at all, nor how we fall
and mother’s there, nor how we reach
from nightmares in the ticking night
and she is there to hold us tight.

There never was a stronger back
than father’s back, that held our weight
and lifted us, when we were small,
and bore us till we reached the gate,
then held our hands that first bright mile
till we could run, and did, and flew.
But, oh, a mother’s tender smile
will leap and follow after you!



This original epigram returns over 750 results:

Autumn Conundrum
by Michael R. Burch

It’s not that every leaf must finally fall,
it’s just that we can never catch them all.



This William Dunbar translation has more than 700 results:

Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar (1460-1525)
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue that is held most dear―
except only that you are merciless.

Into your garden, today, I followed you;
there I saw flowers of freshest hue,
both white and red, delightful to see,
and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently―
yet everywhere, no odor but rue.

I fear that March with his last arctic blast
has slain my fair rose of pallid and gentle cast,
whose piteous death does my heart such pain
that, if I could, I would compose her roots again―
so comforting her bowering leaves have been.



This Sappho translation has over 700 results:

Sappho, fragment 22
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

That enticing girl's clinging dresses
leave me trembling, overcome by happiness,
as once, when I saw the Goddess in my prayers
eclipsing Cyprus.



This original poem has over 700 results for the first line:

Child of 9-11
by Michael R. Burch

a poem for Christina-Taylor Green, who
was born on September 11, 2001 and who
died at age nine, shot to death...

Child of 9-11, beloved,
I bring this lily, lay it down
here at your feet, and eiderdown,
and all soft things, for your gentle spirit.
I bring this psalm―I hope you hear it.

Much love I bring―I lay it down
here by your form, which is not you,
but what you left this shell-shocked world
to help us learn what we must do
to save another child like you.

Child of 9-11, I know
you are not here, but watch, afar
from distant stars, where angels rue
the evil things some mortals do.
I also watch; I also rue.

And so I make this pledge and vow:
though I may weep, I will not rest
nor will my pen fail heaven's test
till guns and wars and hate are banned
from every shore, from every land.

Child of 9-11, I grieve
your tender life, cut short... bereaved,
what can I do, but pledge my life
to saving lives like yours? Belief
in your sweet worth has led me here...

I give my all: my pen, this tear,
this lily and this eiderdown,
and all soft things my heart can bear;
I bring them to your final bier,
and leave them with my promise, here.



My Plato translation (or “take” on Plato) has over 650 results:

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
―Michael R. Burch, after Plato



This translation of a Middle English poem has more than 500 results:

How Long the Night
(anonymous Middle English poem, circa early 13th century AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts
with the mild pheasants' song...
but now I feel the northern wind's blast―
its severe weather strong.
Alas! Alas! This night seems so long!
And I, because of my momentous wrong
now grieve, mourn and fast.



This original epigram returns over 500 results for the first line:

Here and Hereafter aka Saving Graces
by Michael R. Burch

Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter...
wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter.

I have dedicated the epigram above to the so-called Religious Right and Moral Majority.



These Einstein limericks have over 500 results:

The Cosmological Constant
by Michael R. Burch

Einstein, the frizzy-haired,
said E equals MC squared.
Thus all mass decreases
as activity ceases?
Not my mass, my *** declared!

Asstronomical
by Michael R. Burch

Relativity, the theorists’ creed,
says mass increases with speed.
My (m)*** grows when I sit it.
Mr. Einstein, get with it;
equate its deflation, I plead!

Relative to Whom?
by Michael R. Burch

Einstein’s theory, incredibly silly,
says a relative grows *****-nilly
at speeds close to light.
Well, his relatives might,
but mine grow their (m)***** more stilly!



This poem has over 500 results:

Neglect
by Michael R. Burch

What good are tears?
Will they spare the dying their anguish?

What use, our concern
to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?

What good, the warm benevolence of tears
without action?

What help, the eloquence of prayers,
or a pleasant benediction?

Before this day is over,
how many more will die
with bellies swollen, emaciate limbs,
and eyes too parched to cry?

I fear for our souls
as I hear the faint lament
of theirs departing...
mournful, and distant.

How pitiful our "effort,"
yet how fatal its effect.
If they died, then surely we killed them,
if only with neglect.



This Matsuo Basho haiku translation has nearly 500 results:

The first soft snow:
leaves of the awed jonquil
bow low
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



This Matsuo Basho haiku translation has more than 400 results:

Come, investigate loneliness!
a solitary leaf
clings to the Kiri tree
―Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



This original Holocaust poem returns over 400 results:

Auschwitz Rose
by Michael R. Burch

There is a Rose at Auschwitz, in the briar,
a rose like Sharon's, lovely as her name.
The world forgot her, and is not the same.
I still love her and extend this sacred fire
to keep her memory exalted flame
unmolested by the thistles and the nettles.

On Auschwitz now the reddening sunset settles!
They sleep alike―diminutive and tall,
the innocent, the "surgeons." Sleeping, all.

Red oxides of her blood, bright crimson petals,
if accidents of coloration, gall
my heart no less. Amid thick weeds and muck
there lies a rose man's crackling lightning struck:
the only Rose I ever longed to pluck.
Soon I'll bed there and bid the world "Good Luck."



This translation of a Holocaust poem has nearly 300 results:

Speechless
by Ko Un
translation by Michael R. Burch

At Auschwitz
piles of glasses,
mountains of shoes...
returning, we stared out different windows.






Keywords/Tags: Michael Burch, popular, most popular, poems, epigrams, translations, quotes, Google, Internet, journals, literary journals, blogs, social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Yahoo


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This original poem, which has become popular at Halloween, has nearly 3,000 results for the fifth line:

White in the Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

White in the shadows
I see your face,
unbidden. Go, tell
Love it is commonplace;
tell Regret it is not so rare.

Our love is not here
though you smile,
full of sedulous grace.
Lost in darkness, I fear
the past is our resting place.

Published by Carnelian, The Chained Muse, Poetry Life & Times, A-Poem-A-Day and in a YouTube video by Aurora G. with the titles “Ghost,” “White Goddess” and “White in the Shadows”



This original poem returns nearly 1,500 results:

Safe Harbor
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin N. Roberts
The sea at night seems
an alembic of dreams—
the moans of the gulls,
the foghorns’ bawlings.

A century late
to be melancholy,
I watch the last shrimp boat as it steams
to safe harbor again.

In the twilight she gleams
with a festive light,
done with her trawlings,
ready to sleep . . .

Deep, deep, in delight
glide the creatures of night,
elusive and bright
as the poet’s dreams.

Published by The Lyric, Grassroots Poetry, Romantics Quarterly, Angle, Poetry Life & Times




This translation of the oldest extant English poem has over 1,250 results:

Cædmon's Hymn (circa 658-680 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Humbly now we honour heaven-kingdom's Guardian,
the Measurer's might and his mind-plans,
the goals of the Glory-Father. First he, the Everlasting Lord,
established earth's fearful foundations.
Then he, the First Scop, hoisted heaven as a roof
for the sons of men: Holy Creator,
mankind's great Maker! Then he, the Ever-Living Lord,
afterwards made men middle-earth: Master Almighty!



This Faiz Ahmed Faiz translation has over 1,000 results:

Last Night
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Last night, your memory stole into my heart—
as spring sweeps uninvited into barren gardens,
as morning breezes reinvigorate dormant deserts,
as a patient suddenly feels better, for no apparent reason ...


This light verse response to Philip Larkin’s “Aubade” has nearly 1,000 results:

Abide
by Michael R. Burch

after Philip Larkin's "Aubade"

It is hard to understand or accept mortality—
such an alien concept: not to be.
Perhaps unsettling enough to spawn religion,
or to scare mutant fish out of a primordial sea
boiling like goopy green tea in a kettle.
Perhaps a man should exhibit more mettle
than to admit such fear, denying Nirvana exists
simply because we are stuck here in such a fine fettle.
And so we abide . . .
even in life, staring out across that dark brink.
And if the thought of death makes your questioning heart sink,
it is best not to drink
(or, drinking, certainly not to think).

Originally published by Light Quarterly



This love poem has nearly 1,000 results:

don’t forget ...
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

don’t forget to remember
that Space is curved
(like your Heart)
and that even Light is bent
by your Gravity.



This original Hiroshima poem has nearly 800 results:

Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch

Go then,
and give them my meaning
so that their teeming
streets
become my city.
Bring back a pretty
flower—
a chrysanthemum,
perhaps, to bloom
if but an hour,
within a certain room
of mine
where
the sun does not rise or fall,
and the moon,
although it is content to shine,
helps nothing at all.
There,
if I hear the wistful call
of their voices
regretting choices
made
or perhaps not made
in time,
I can look back upon it and recall,
in all
its pale forms sublime,
still
Death will never be holy again.

Published by Romantics Quarterly, Penny Dreadful and Poetry Life & Times



This epigram has over 600 results for the first line:
Piercing the Shell
by Michael R. Burch

If we strip away all the accouterments of war,
perhaps we’ll discover what the heart is for.



This prayer poem has over 600 results and has been set to music and performed at a charity benefit for hurricane victims:

I Pray Tonight
by Michael R. Burch

I pray tonight
the starry Light
might
surround you.

I pray
by day
that, come what may,
no dark thing confound you.

I pray ere the morrow
an end to your sorrow.
May angels' white chorales
sing, and astound you.



This original poem has nearly 600 results:

Like Angels, Winged
by Michael R. Burch

Like angels—winged,
shimmering, misunderstood—
they flit beyond our understanding
being neither evil, nor good.

They are as they are ...
and we are their lovers, their prey;
they seek us out when the moon is full;
they dream of us by day.

Their eyes—hypnotic, alluring—
trap ours with their strange appeal
till like flame-drawn moths, we gather ...
to see, to touch, to feel.

And in their arms, enchanted,
we feel their lips, grown old,
till with their gorging kisses
we warm them, growing cold.



This original poem has over 500 results:

Distances
by Michael R. Burch

Moonbeams on water —
the reflected light
of a halcyon star
now drowning in night ...
So your memories are.

Footprints on beaches
now flooding with water;
the small, broken ribcage
of some primitive slaughter ...
So near, yet so far.



This original poem has over 500 results:

***** Nilly
by Michael R. Burch

for the Demiurge, aka Yahweh/Jehovah

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You made the stallion,
you made the filly,
and now they sleep
in the dark earth, stilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
You forced them to run
all their days uphilly.
They ran till they dropped—
life’s a pickle, dilly.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?

Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?
They say I should worship you!
Oh, really!
They say I should pray
so you’ll not act illy.
Isn’t it silly, ***** Nilly?



This epigram/joke has over 400 results:

Teddy Roosevelt spoke softly and carried a big stick; Donald Trump speaks loudly and carries a big shtick.―Michael R. Burch



This **** Baudelaire translation has become popular with **** stars, escort sites and dating services, and has more than 400 results:

Le Balcon (The Balcony)
by Charles Baudelaire
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Paramour of memory, ultimate mistress,
source of all pleasure, my only desire;
how can I forget your ecstatic caresses,
the warmth of your ******* by the roaring fire,
paramour of memory, ultimate mistress?

Each night illumined by the burning coals
we lay together where the rose-fragrance clings—
how soft your *******, how tender your soul!
Ah, and we said imperishable things,
each night illumined by the burning coals.

How beautiful the sunsets these sultry days,
deep space so profound, beyond life’s brief floods ...
then, when I kissed you, my queen, in a daze,
I thought I breathed the bouquet of your blood
as beautiful as sunsets these sultry days.

Night thickens around us like a wall;
in the deepening darkness our irises meet.
I drink your breath, ah! poisonous yet sweet!,
as with fraternal hands I massage your feet
while night thickens around us like a wall.

I have mastered the sweet but difficult art
of happiness here, with my head in your lap,
finding pure joy in your body, your heart;
because you’re the queen of my present and past
I have mastered love’s sweet but difficult art.

O vows! O perfumes! O infinite kisses!
Can these be reborn from a gulf we can’t sound
as suns reappear, as if heaven misses
their light when they sink into seas dark, profound?
O vows! O perfumes! O infinite kisses!



This original poem has over 400 results:

What the Poet Sees
by Michael R. Burch

What the poet sees,
he sees as a swimmer
~~~underwater~~~
watching the shoreline blur
sees through his breath’s weightless bubbles ...
Both worlds grow obscure.



This original poem I wrote as a teenager has almost 400 results:

The Communion of Sighs
by Michael R. Burch

There was a moment
without the sound of trumpets or a shining light,
but with only silence and darkness and a cool mist
felt more than seen.
I was eighteen,
my heart pounding wildly within me like a fist.
Expectation hung like a cry in the night,
and your eyes shone like the corona of a comet.

There was an instant . . .
without words, but with a deeper communion,
as clothing first, then inhibitions fell;
liquidly our lips met
—feverish, wet—
forgotten, the tales of heaven and hell,
in the immediacy of our fumbling union . . .
when the rest of the world became distant.
Then the only light was the moon on the rise,
and the only sound, the communion of sighs.

This is one of my early poems ; I believe it was probably written during my first two years in college, making me 18 or 19 at the time.



This original poem has more than 300 results:

Kin
by Michael R. Burch

O pale, austere moon,
haughty beauty ...
what do we know of love,
or duty?



This original poem has more than 300 results:

escape!
by michael r. burch

for anaïs vionet

to live among the daffodil folk . . .
slip down the rainslickened drainpipe . . .
suddenly pop out
the GARGANTUAN SPOUT . . .
minuscule as alice, shout
yippee-yi-yee!
in wee exultant glee
to be leaving behind the
LARGE
THREE-DENALI GARAGE.



This Matsuo Basho haiku translation has more than 300 results:

An ancient pond,
the frog leaps:
the silver plop and gurgle of water
― Matsuo Basho, loose translation by Michael R. Burch



This haiku translation has more than 300 results:

Oh, fallen camellias,
if I were you,
I'd leap into the torrent!
― Takaha Shugyo, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



This translation of an Anacreon epigram has over 300 results:

Here he lies in state tonight: great is his Monument!
Yet Ares cares not, neither does War relent.
—Anacreon, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



This 9–11 poem has over 300 results:

Charon 2001
by Michael R. Burch

I, too, have stood—paralyzed at the helm
watching onrushing, inevitable disaster.
I too have felt sweat (or ecstatic tears) plaster
damp hair to my eyes, as a slug’s dense film
becomes mucous-insulate. Always, thereafter
living in darkness, bright things overwhelm.

Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea



This “almost” limerick has over 300 results:

Caveat Spender
by Michael R. Burch

It’s better not to speculate
"continually" on who is great.
Though relentless awe’s
a Célèbre Cause,
please reserve some time for the contemplation
of the perils of EXAGGERATION.



This little poetic snapshot has over 300 results:
Warming Her Pearls
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Warming her pearls, her *******
gleam like constellations.
Her belly is a bit rotund...
she might have stepped out of a Rubens.



This vampire poem, popular at Halloween, has nearly 300 results:

Pale Though Her Eyes
by Michael R. Burch

Pale though her eyes,
her lips are scarlet
from drinking of blood,
this child, this harlot

born of the night
and her heart, of darkness,
evil incarnate
to dance so reckless,

dreaming of blood,
her fangs―white―baring,
revealing her lust,
and her eyes, pale, staring...



This Fukuda Chiyo-ni haiku translation has nearly 300 results:

Ah butterfly!
what dreams do you ply
with your beautiful wings?
― Fukuda Chiyo-ni, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



This translation of the Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan has over 300 results:

Enough for Me
by Fadwa Tuqan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Enough for me to lie in the earth,
to be buried in her,
to sink meltingly into her fecund soil, to vanish ...
only to spring forth like a flower
brightening the play of my countrymen's children.
Enough for me to remain
in my native soil's embrace,
to be as close as a handful of dirt,
a sprig of grass,
a wildflower.



This translation of a poem by the Kurdish poet Kajal Ahmad has over 300 results:

Mirror
by Kajal Ahmad, a Kurdish poet
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

My era's obscuring mirror
shattered
because it magnified the small
and made the great seem insignificant.
Dictators and monsters filled its contours.
Now when I breathe
its jagged shards pierce my heart
and instead of sweat
I exude glass.



This original poem has over 300 results:

Regret
by Michael R. Burch

Regret,
a bitter
ache to bear . . .
once starlight
languished
in your hair . . .
a shining there
as brief
as rare.

Regret . . .
a pain
I chose to bear . . .
unleash
the torrent
of your hair . . .
and show me
once again—
how rare.



This original poem, popular at Valentine’s Day, has nearly 300 results:

Let Me Give Her Diamonds
by Michael R. Burch

Let me give her diamonds
for my heart's
sharp edges.

Let me give her roses
for my soul's
thorn.

Let me give her solace
for my words
of treason.

Let the flowering of love
outlast a winter
season.

Let me give her books
for all my lack
of reason.

Let me give her candles
for my lack
of fire.

Let me kindle incense,
for our hearts
require

the breath-fanned
flaming perfume
of desire.



This original poem has nearly 300 results:

Fascination with Light
by Michael R. Burch

for Anaïs Vionet

Desire glides in on calico wings,
a breath of a moth
seeking a companionable light,
where it hovers, unsure,
sullen, shy or demure,
in the margins of night,
a soft blur.

With a frantic dry rattle
of alien wings,
it rises and thrums one long breathless staccato
and flutters and drifts on in dark aimless flight.

And yet it returns
to the flame, its delight,
as long as it burns.

This Vera Pavlova translation has over 250 results:

Shattered
by Vera Pavlova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot.



These Holocaust poem translations of Miklos Radnoti have over 200 results each:

Postcard 1
by Miklós Radnóti
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Out of Bulgaria, the great wild roar of the artillery thunders,
resounds on the mountain ridges, rebounds, then ebbs into silence
while here men, beasts, wagons and imagination all steadily increase;
the road whinnies and bucks, neighing; the maned sky gallops;
and you are eternally with me, love, constant amid all the chaos,
glowing within my conscience―incandescent, intense.
Somewhere within me, dear, you abide forever―
still, motionless, mute, like an angel stunned to silence by death
or a beetle hiding in the heart of a rotting tree.



Postcard 2
by Miklós Radnóti
written October 6, 1944 near Crvenka, Serbia
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

A few miles away they're incinerating
the haystacks and the houses,
while squatting here on the fringe of this pleasant meadow,
the shell-shocked peasants sit quietly smoking their pipes.
Now, here, stepping into this still pond, the little shepherd girl
sets the silver water a-ripple
while, leaning over to drink, her flocculent sheep
seem to swim like drifting clouds.



Postcard 3
by Miklós Radnóti
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The oxen dribble ****** spittle;
the men pass blood in their ****.
Our stinking regiment halts, a horde of perspiring savages,
adding our aroma to death's repulsive stench.



Postcard 4
by Miklós Radnóti
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I toppled beside him―his body already taut,
tight as a string just before it snaps,
shot in the back of the head.
"This is how you’ll end too; just lie quietly here,"
I whispered to myself, patience blossoming from dread.
"Der springt noch auf," the voice above me jeered;
I could only dimly hear
through the congealing blood slowly sealing my ear.

This was his final poem, written October 31, 1944 near Szentkirályszabadja, Hungary. "Der springt noch auf" means something like "That one is still twitching."



This poetic tribute to Muhammad Ali has over 250 results:

Ali’s Song
by Michael R. Burch

They say that gold don’t tarnish. It ain’t so.
They say it has a wild, unearthly glow.
A man can be more beautiful, more wild.
I flung their medal to the river, child.
I flung their medal to the river, child.

They hung their coin around my neck; they made
my name a bridle, “called a ***** a *****.”
They say their gold is pure. I say defiled.
I flung their slave’s name to the river, child.
I flung their slave’s name to the river, child.

Ain’t got no quarrel with no Viet Cong
that never called me ******, did me wrong.
A man can’t be lukewarm, ’cause God hates mild.
I flung their notice to the river, child.
I flung their notice to the river, child.

They said, “Now here’s your bullet and your gun,
and there’s your cell: we’re waiting, you choose one.”
At first I groaned aloud, but then I smiled.
I gave their “future” to the river, child.
I gave their “future” to the river, child.

My face reflected up, dark bronze like gold,
a coin God stamped in His own image—BOLD.
My blood boiled like that river—strange and wild.
I died to hate in that dark river, child,
Come, be reborn in this bright river, child.

Originally published by Black Medina



This poem about US involvement in an ongoing Holocaust has over 200 results:

who, US?
by Michael R. Burch

jesus was born
a palestinian child
where there’s no Room
for the meek and the mild

... and in bethlehem still
to this day, lambs are born
to cries of “no Room!”
and Puritanical scorn ...

under Herod, Trump, Bibi
their fates are the same —
the slouching Beast mauls them
and WE have no shame:
“who’s to blame?”



This Ō no Yasumaro translation has over 200 results:

While you decline to cry,
high on the mountainside
a single stalk of plumegrass wilts.
―Ō no Yasumaro (circa 711), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



These Sappho translations have over 200 results:

Sappho, fragment 156
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

She keeps her scents
in a dressing-case.
And her sense?
In some undiscoverable place.



Sappho, fragment 58
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Pain
drains
me
to
the
last
drop
.



This Parmenio translation has over 200 results:

Be ashamed, O mountains and seas,
that these valorous men lack breath.
Assume, like pale chattels,
an ashen silence at death.
—Michael R. Burch, after Parmenio



This original epigram has over 200 results:

Love is either wholly folly,
or fully holy.
—Michael R. Burch



Other poems, epigrams and translations with more than 100 results:



Hymn for Fallen Soldiers
by Michael R. Burch

Sound the awesome cannons.
Pin medals to each breast.
Attention, honor guard!
Give them a hero’s rest.
Recite their names to the heavens
Till the stars acknowledge their kin.
Then let the land they defended
Gather them in again.

When I learned there’s an American military organization, the DPAA (Defense/POW/MIA Accounting Agency) that is still finding and bringing home the bodies of soldiers who died serving their country in World War II, after blubbering like a baby, I managed to eke out this poem.



Nun Fun Undone
by Michael R. Burch

Abbesses’
recesses
are not for excesses!



pretty pickle
by michael r. burch

u’d blaspheme if u could
because ur God’s no good,
but of course u cant:
ur a lowly ant
(or so u were told by a Hierophant).



I, Too, Have a Dream
by Michael R. Burch writing as “The Child Poets of Gaza”

I, too, have a dream ...
that one day Jews and Christians
will see me as I am:
a small child, lonely and afraid,
staring down the barrels of their big bazookas,
knowing I did nothing
to deserve their enmity.



My Nightmare ...
by Michael R. Burch  writing as “The Child Poets of Gaza”

I had a dream of Jesus!
Mama, his eyes were so kind!
But behind him I saw a billion Christians
hissing "You're nothing!," so blind.



Multiplication, Tabled
by Michael R. Burch

(for the Religious Right)

“Be fruitful and multiply”—
great advice, for a fruitfly!
But for women and men,
simple Simons, say, “WHEN!”



Once fanaticism has gangrened brains
the incurable malady invariably remains.
—Voltaire, translation by Michael R. Burch



Snapshots
by Michael R. Burch

Here I scrawl extravagant rainbows.
And there you go, skipping your way to school.

And here we are, drifting apart
like untethered balloons.

Here I am, creating "art,"
chanting in shadows,
pale as the crinoline moon,
ignoring your face.

There you go,
in diaphanous lace,
making another man’s heart swoon.

Suddenly, unthinkably, here he is,
taking my place.



Indestructible, for Johnny Cash
by Michael R. Burch

What is a mountain, but stone?
Or a spire, but a trinket of steel?
Johnny Cash is gone,
black from his hair to his bootheels.

Can a man out-endure mountains’ stone
if his songs lift us closer to heaven?
Can the steel in his voice vibrate on
till his words are our manna and leaven?

Then sing, all you mountains of stone,
with the rasp of his voice, and the gravel.
Let the twang of thumbed steel lead us home
through these weary dark ways all men travel.

For what is a mountain, but stone?
Or a spire, but a trinket of steel?
Johnny Cash lives on—
black from his hair to his bootheels.



Wulf and Eadwacer
ancient Old English (Anglo-Saxon) poem, circa 990 AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My clan's curs pursue him like crippled game;
they'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack.
It is otherwise with us.

Wulf's on one island; we're on another.
His island's a fortress, fastened by fens. (fastened=secured)
Here, bloodthirsty curs howl for carnage.
They'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack.
It is otherwise with us.

My hopes pursued Wulf like panting hounds,
but whenever it rained—how I wept!—
the boldest cur clutched me in his paws:
good feelings for him, but for me loathsome!

Wulf, O, my Wulf, my ache for you
has made me sick; your seldom-comings
have left me famished, deprived of real meat.
Have you heard, Eadwacer? Watchdog!
A wolf has borne our wretched whelp to the woods.
One can easily sever what never was one:
our song together.

Hearthside
by Michael R. Burch

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep...” — W. B. Yeats

For all that we professed of love, we knew
this night would come, that we would bend alone
to tend wan fires’ dimming bars—the moan
of wind cruel as the Trumpet, gelid dew
an eerie presence on encrusted logs
we hoard like jewels, embrittled so ourselves.
The books that line these close, familiar shelves
loom down like dreary chaperones. Wild dogs,
too old for mates, cringe furtive in the park,
as, toothless now, I frame this parchment kiss.
I do not know the words for easy bliss
and so my shriveled fingers clutch this stark,
long-unenamored pen and will it: Move.
I loved you more than words, so let words prove.



Observance
by Michael R. Burch

Here the hills are old and rolling
casually in their old age;
on the horizon youthful mountains
bathe themselves in windblown fountains . . .

By dying leaves and falling raindrops,
I have traced time's starts and stops,
and I have known the years to pass
almost unnoticed, whispering through treetops . . .

For here the valleys fill with sunlight
to the brim, then empty again,
and it seems that only I notice
how the years flood out, and in . . .

This is an early poem that made me feel like a “real poet.” I remember writing it in the break room of the McDonald's where I worked as a high school student. I believe that was at age 17.



Discrimination
by Michael R. Burch

The meter I had sought to find, perplexed,
was ripped from books of "verse" that read like prose.
I found it in sheet music, in long rows
of hologramic CDs, in sad wrecks
of long-forgotten volumes undisturbed
half-centuries by archivists, unscanned.
I read their fading numbers, frowned, perturbed—
why should such tattered artistry be banned?
I heard the sleigh bells’ jingles, vampish ads,
the supermodels’ babble, Seuss’s books
extolled in major movies, blurbs for abs ...
A few poor thinnish journals crammed in nooks
are all I’ve found this late to sell to those
who’d classify free verse "expensive prose."

Originally published by The Chariton Review



Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
damask
and lilac
and sweet-scented heathers?

And will she find flowers,
or will she find thorns
guarding the petals
of roses unborn?

Will there be starlight
tonight
while she gathers
seashells
and mussels
and albatross feathers?

And will she find treasure
or will she find pain
at the end of this rainbow
of moonlight on rain?



in-flight convergence
by Michael R. Burch

serene, almost angelic,
the lights of the city extend
over lumbering behemoths
shrilly screeching displeasure;
they say
that nothing is certain,
that nothing man dreams or ordains
long endures his command
here the streetlights that flicker
and those blazing steadfast
seem one: from a distance;
descend,
they abruptly
part ways,
so that nothing is one
which at times does not suddenly blend
into garish insignificance
in the familiar alleyways,
in the white neon flash
and the billboards of Convenience
and man seems the afterthought of his own Brilliance
as we thunder down the enlightened runways.

Originally published by The Aurorean and nominated for the Pushcart Prize


Pan
by Michael R. Burch

... Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves ...
... Once there were paths that led to coracles
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles ...
... where we cannot return, because we lost
the pebbles and the playthings, and the moss ...
... hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair
who never were enchanted, and the stairs ...
... that led up to the Fortress in the trees
will not support our weight, but on our knees ...
... we still might fit inside those splendid hours
of damsels in distress, of rustic towers ...
... of voices heard in wolves’ tormented howls
that died, and live in dreams’ soft, windy vowels ...



At Wilfred Owen’s Grave
by Michael R. Burch

A week before the Armistice, you died.
They did not keep your heart like Livingstone’s,
then plant your bones near Shakespeare’s. So you lie
between two privates, sacrificed like Christ
to politics, your poetry unknown
except for that brief flurry’s: thirteen months
with Gaukroger beside you in the trench,
dismembered, as you babbled, as the stench
of gangrene filled your nostrils, till you clenched
your broken heart together and the fist
began to pulse with life, so close to death.
Or was it at Craiglockhart, in the care
of “ergotherapists” that you sensed life
is only in the work, and made despair
a thing that Yeats despised, but also breath,
a mouthful’s merest air, inspired less
than wrested from you, and which we confess
we only vaguely breathe: the troubled air
that even Sassoon failed to share, because
a man in pieces is not healed by gauze,
and breath’s transparent, unless we believe
the words are true despite their lack of weight
and float to us like chlorine—scalding eyes,
and lungs, and hearts. Your words revealed the fate
of boys who retched up life here, gagged on lies.



Ebb Tide
by Michael R. Burch

Massive, gray, these leaden waves
bear their unchanging burden—
the sameness of each day to day
while the wind seems to struggle to say
something half-submerged planks at the mouth of the bay
might nuzzle limp seaweed to understand.
Now collapsing dull waves drain away
from the unenticing land;
shrieking gulls shadow fish through salt spray—
whitish streaks on a fogged silver mirror.
Sizzling lightning impresses its brand.
Unseen fingers scribble something in the wet sand.

Originally published by Southwest Review



At Once
by Michael R. Burch

Though she was fair,
though she sent me the epistle of her love at once
and inscribed therein love’s antique prayer,
I did not love her at once.
Though she would dare
pain’s pale, clinging shadows, to approach me at once,
the dark, haggard keeper of the lair,
I did not love her at once.
Though she would share
the all of her being, to heal me at once,
yet more than her touch I was unable bear.
I did not love her at once.
And yet she would care,
and pour out her essence ...
and yet—there was more!
I awoke from long darkness,
and yet—she was there.
I loved her the longer;
I loved her the more
because I did not love her at once.

Published by The Lyric, Romantics Quarterly and Grassroots Poetry



Chloe
by Michael R. Burch

There were skies onyx at night ... moons by day ...
lakes pale as her eyes ... breathless winds
******* tall elms; ... she would say
that we loved, but I figured we’d sinned.
Soon impatiens too fiery to stay
sagged; the crocus bells drooped, golden-limned;
things of brightness, rinsed out, ran to gray ...
all the light of that world softly dimmed.
Where our feet were inclined, we would stray;
there were paths where dead weeds stood untrimmed,
distant mountains that loomed in our way,
thunder booming down valleys dark-hymned.
What I found, I found lost in her face
while yielding all my virtue to her grace.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly as “A Dying Fall”



The Wonder Boys
by Michael R. Burch

(for Leslie Mellichamp, the late editor of The Lyric,
who was a friend and mentor to many poets, and
a fine poet in his own right)

The stars were always there, too-bright cliches:
scintillant truths the jaded world outgrew
as baffled poets winged keyed kites—amazed,
in dream of shocks that suddenly came true . . .
but came almost as static—background noise,
a song out of the cosmos no one hears,
or cares to hear. The poets, starstruck boys,
lay tuned in to their kite strings, saucer-eared.
They thought to feel the lightning’s brilliant sparks
electrify their nerves, their brains; the smoke
of words poured from their overheated hearts.
The kite string, knotted, made a nifty rope . . .
You will not find them here; they blew away—
in tumbling flight beyond nights’ stars. They clung
by fingertips to satellites. They strayed
too far to remain mortal. Elfin, young,
their words are with us still. Devout and fey,
they wink at us whenever skies are gray.

Originally published by The Lyric



The Beat Goes On (and On and On and On ...)
by Michael R. Burch

Bored stiff by his board-stiff attempts
at “meter,” I crossly concluded
I’d use each iamb
in lieu of a lamb,
bedtimes when I’m under-quaaluded.

Originally published by Grand Little Things



Playmates
by Michael R. Burch

WHEN you were my playmate and I was yours,
we spent endless hours with simple toys,
and the sorrows and cares of our indentured days
were uncomprehended . . . far, far away . . .
for the temptations and trials we had yet to face
were lost in the shadows of an unventured maze.
Then simple pleasures were easy to find
and if they cost us a little, we didn't mind;
for even a penny in a pocket back then
was one penny too many, a penny to spend.
Then feelings were feelings and love was just love,
not a strange, complex mystery to be understood;
while "sin" and "damnation" meant little to us,
since forbidden cookies were our only lusts!
Then we never worried about what we had,
and we were both sure—what was good, what was bad.
And we sometimes quarreled, but we didn't hate;
we seldom gave thought to the uncertainties of fate.
Hell, we seldom thought about the next day,
when tomorrow seemed hidden—adventures away.
Though sometimes we dreamed of adventures past,
and wondered, at times, why things couldn't last.
Still, we never worried about getting by,
and we didn't know that we were to die . . .
when we spent endless hours with simple toys,
and I was your playmate, and we were boys.

This is probably the poem that "made" me, because my high school English teacher called it "beautiful" and I took that to mean I was surely the Second Coming of Percy Bysshe Shelley! "Playmates" is the second poem I remember writing; I believe I was around 13 or 14 at the time. It was originally published by The Lyric.



Lines for My Ascension
by Michael R. Burch

I.
If I should die,
there will come a Doom,
and the sky will darken
to the deepest Gloom.

But if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

II.
If I should die,
let no mortal say,
“Here was a man,
with feet of clay,
or a timid sparrow
God’s hand let fall.”
But watch the sky darken
to an eerie pall
and know that my Spirit,
unvanquished, broods,
and scoffs at quaint churchyards
littered with roods.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

III.
If I should die,
let no man adore
his incompetent Maker:
Zeus, Yahweh, or Thor.
Think of Me as One
who never died—
the unvanquished Immortal
with the unriven side.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

IV.
And if I should “die,”
though the clouds grow dark
as fierce lightnings rend
this bleak asteroid, stark ...
If you look above,
you will see a bright Sign—
the sun with the moon
in its arms, Divine.
So divine, if you can,
my bright meaning, and know—
my Spirit is mine.
I will go where I go.

And if my body
should not be found,
never think of me
in the cold ground.

Translations with more than 100 results and/or a high number of page views:

“Wulf and Eadwacer” translation
“Deor’s Lament” translation
“The Wife’s Lament” translation
“Whoso List to Hunt” by Sir Thomas Wyatt, translation
“The Eager Traveler” by Ahmad Faraz, translation
“Herbsttag” (“Autumn Day”) by Rainer Maria Rilke, translation
“Archaischer Torso Apollos” (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”) by Rainer Maria Rilke, translation
“Komm, Du” (“Come, You”) by Rainer Maria Rilke, translation
“Der Panther” (“The Panther”) by Rainer Maria Rilke, translation
“Liebes-Lied” (“Love Song”) by Rainer Maria Rilke, translation
“Das Lied des Bettlers” (“The Beggar’s Song”) by Rainer Maria Rilke, translation
Original poems with more than 100 results:
“Water and Gold”
“See”
“The Folly of Wisdom”
“The Effects of Memory”
“Finally to Burn: the Fall and Resurrection of Icarus”




Dream of Infinity
by Michael R. Burch

Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach,
then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach?

Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage
on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage?
Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too,
have dreamed of infinity... windswept and blue.

This poem was originally published by TC Broadsheet Verses. I was paid a whopping $10, my first cash payment. It was subsequently published by Piedmont Literary Review, Penny Dreadful, the Net Poetry and Art Competition, Songs of Innocence, Poetry Life & Times, Better Than Starbucks and The Chained Muse.



we did not Dye in vain!
by Michael R. Burch

from “songs of the sea snails”

though i’m just a slimy crawler,
my lineage is proud:
my forebears gave their lives
(oh, let the trumps blare loud!)
so purple-mantled Royals
might stand out in a crowd.

i salute you, fellow loyals,
who labor without scruple
as your incomes fall
while deficits quadruple
to swaddle unjust Lords
in bright imperial purple!

Notes: In ancient times the purple dye produced from the secretions of purpura mollusks (sea snails) was known as “Tyrian purple,” “royal purple” and “imperial purple.” It was greatly prized in antiquity, and was very expensive according to the historian Theopompus: “Purple for dyes fetched its weight in silver at Colophon.” Thus, purple-dyed fabrics became status symbols, and laws often prevented commoners from possessing them. The production of Tyrian purple was tightly controlled in Byzantium, where the imperial court restricted its use to the coloring of imperial silks. A child born to the reigning emperor was literally porphyrogenitos ("born to the purple") because the imperial birthing apartment was walled in porphyry, a purple-hued rock, and draped with purple silks. Royal babies were swaddled in purple; we know this because the iconodules, who disagreed with the emperor Constantine about the veneration of images, accused him of defecating on his imperial purple swaddling clothes!



Circe
by Michael R. Burch

She spoke
and her words
were like a ringing echo dying
or like smoke
rising and drifting
while the earth below is spinning.

She awoke
with a cry
from a dream that had no ending,
without hope
or strength to rise,
into hopelessness descending.

And an ache
in her heart
toward that dream, retreating,
left a wake
of small waves
in circles never completing.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly



To Have Loved
by Michael R. Burch

"The face that launched a thousand ships ..."

Helen, bright accompaniment,
accouterment of war as sure as all
the polished swords of princes groomed to lie
in mausoleums all eternity ...

The price of love is not so high
as never to have loved once in the dark
beyond foreseeing. Now, as dawn gleams pale
upon small wind-fanned waves, amid white sails, ...

now all that war entails becomes as small,
as though receding. Paris in your arms
was never yours, nor were you his at all.
And should gods call

in numberless strange voices, should you hear,
still what would be the difference? Men must die
to be remembered. Fame, the shrillest cry,
leaves all the world dismembered.

Hold him, lie,
tell many pleasant tales of lips and thighs;
enthrall him with your sweetness, till the pall
and ash lie cold upon him.

Is this all? You saw fear in his eyes, and now they dim
with fear’s remembrance. Love, the fiercest cry,
becomes gasped sighs in his once-gallant hymn
of dreamed “salvation.” Still, you do not care

because you have this moment, and no man
can touch you as he can ... and when he’s gone
there will be other men to look upon
your beauty, and have done.

Smile―woebegone, pale, haggard. Will the tales
paint this―your final portrait? Can the stars
find any strange alignments, Zodiacs,
to spell, or unspell, what held beauty lacks?



NOVELTIES
by Thomas Campion
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their ****** for exotic positions.



Nod to the Master
by Michael R. Burch

for the Divine Oscar Wilde

If every witty thing that’s said were true,
Oscar Wilde, the world would worship You!



A question that sometimes drives me hazy:
am I or are the others crazy?
—Albert Einstein, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



This is love: to fly toward a mysterious sky,
to cause ten thousand veils to fall.
First, to stop clinging to life,
then to step out, without feet ...
—Rumi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



To live without philosophizing is to close one's eyes and never attempt to open them. – Rene Descartes, loose translation by Michael R. Burch



Stage Fright
by Michael R. Burch

To be or not to be?
In the end Hamlet
opted for naught.



I test the tightrope
balancing a child
in each arm.
—Vera Pavlova, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Brief Fling
by Michael R. Burch

“Epigram”
means cram,
then scram!



*******
by Michael R. Burch

You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once.
But joys are wan illusions to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.



Love is either wholly folly,
or fully holy.
—Michael R. Burch



Intimations
by Michael R. Burch

Let mercy surround us
with a sweet persistence.

Let love propound to us
that life is infinitely more than existence.



Less Heroic Couplets: Marketing 101
by Michael R. Burch

Building her brand, she disrobes,
naked, except for her earlobes.



Villanelle of an Opportunist
by Michael R. Burch

I’m not looking for someone to save.
A gal has to do what a gal has to do:
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

How many highways to hell must I pave
with intentions imagined, not true?
I’m not looking for someone to save.

Fools praise compassion while weaklings rave,
but a gal has to do what a gal has to do.
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

Some praise the Lord but the Devil’s my fave
because he has led me to you!
I’m not looking for someone to save.

In the land of the free and the home of the brave,
a gal has to do what a gal has to do.
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.

Every day without meds becomes a close shave
and the razor keeps tempting me too.
I’m not looking for someone to save:
I’m looking for a man with one foot in the grave.



She Always Grew Roses
by Michael R. Burch

for my grandmother, Lillian Lee

Tell us, heart, what the season discloses.
“Too little loved by the ego in its poses,
she always grew roses.”

What the heart would embrace, the ego opposes,
fritters away, and sometimes bulldozes.
Tell us, heart, what the season discloses.

“Too little loved by the ego in its poses,
she loved nonetheless, as her legacy discloses—
she always grew roses.”

How does one repent when regret discomposes?
When the shadow of guilt, at last, interposes?
Tell us, heart, what the season discloses.

“Too little loved by the ego in its poses,
she continued to love, as her handiwork shows us,
and she always grew roses.”

Too little, too late, the grieved heart imposes
its too-patient will as the opened book recloses.
Tell us, heart, what the season discloses.
“She always grew roses.”

The opened-then-closed book is a picture album. The season is late fall because it was in my autumn years that I realized I had written poems for everyone in my family except Grandma Lee. Hopefully it is never too late to repent and correct an old wrong.



Little Sparrow
by Michael R. Burch

for my petite grandmother, Christine Ena Hurt, who couldn’t carry a note, but sang her heart out with great joy, accompanied, I have no doubt, by angels

“In praise of Love and Life we bring
this sacramental offering.”
Little sparrow of a woman, sing!

What did she have? Hardly a thing.
A roof, plain food, and a tiny gold ring.
Yet, “In praise of Love and Life we bring

this sacramental offering.”
“Hosanna!” angel choirs ring.
Little sparrow of a woman, sing!

Whence comes this praise, as angels sing
to her tuneless voice? What of Death’s sting?
Yet, “In praise of Love and Life we bring

this sacramental offering.”
Let others have their stoles and bling.
Little sparrow of a woman, sing!

“In praise of Love and Life we bring
this sacramental offering
as the harps of beaming angels ring.
Little sparrow of a woman, sing!”



She is brighter than dawn
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

There’s a light about her
like the moon through a mist:
a bright incandescence
with which she is blessed

and my heart to her light
like the tide now is pulled . . .
she is fair, O, and bright
like the moon silver-veiled.

There’s a fire within her
like the sun’s leaping forth
to lap up the darkness
of night from earth's hearth

and my eyes to her flame
like twin moths now are drawn
till my heart is consumed.
She is brighter than dawn.



Geraldine in her pj's
by Michael R. Burch

for Geraldine A. V. Hughes

Geraldine in her pj's
checks her security relays,
sits down armed with a skillet,
mutters, "Intruder? I'll **** it!"
Then, as satellites wink high above,
she turns to her poets with love.



Rag Doll
by Michael R. Burch, age 17

On an angry sea a rag doll is tossed
back and forth between cruel waves
that have marred her easy beauty
and ripped away her clothes.
And her arms, once smoothly tanned,
are gashed and torn and peeling
as she dances to the waters’
rockings and reelings.
     She’s a rag doll now,
     a toy of the sea,
     and never before
     has she been so free,
     or so uneasy.

She’s slammed by the hammering waves,
the flesh shorn away from her bones,
and her silent lips must long to scream,
and her corpse must long to find its home.
     For she’s a rag doll now,
     at the mercy of all
     the sea’s relentless power,
     cruelly being ravaged
     with every passing hour.

Her eyes are gone; her lips are swollen
shut to the pounding waves
whose waters reached out to fill her mouth
with puddles of agony.
Her limbs are limp; her skull is crushed;
her hair hangs like seaweed
in trailing tendrils draped across
a never-ending sea.
     For she’s a rag doll now,
     a worn-out toy
     with which the waves will play
     ten thousand thoughtless games
     until her bed is made.



Teddy Roosevelt spoke softly and carried a big stick; Donald Trump speaks loudly and carries a big shtick.—Michael R. Burch



Viral Donald (I)
by Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"

Donald Trump is coronaviral:
his brain's in a downward spiral.
His pale nimbus of hair
proves there's nothing up there
but an empty skull, fluff and denial.



Viral Donald (II)
by Michael R. Burch aka "The Loyal Opposition"

Why didn't Herr Trump, the POTUS,
protect us from the Coronavirus?
That weird orange corona of hair's an alarm:
Trump is the Virus in Human Form!

Keywords/Tags: Michael Burch, popular, most popular, best poems, viral poems, poetry, poetic expression, epigrams, epitaph, translation, translations, quotes, Google, Internet, journals, literary journals, blogs, social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Yahoo, international, mrbpop, mrbbest, mrbest

The Seventh Floor
By Otuogbodor, Okeibunor

He just saw her downstairs seated
She saw him pass by but noticed him
He went up to the seventh floor
She breathes the air of freshness
Freshness from home, freshness to school
His mounts of the stairs mounts hope
She sat solitary savouring that air of hope
The university,the hope shaper
The dream comber, ivory tower,
A monumental hope to mount.
One hour past, from that height
He looked down he saw her
She looked up she saw him
Eyes  locked in seconds
Hearts lost to hope
He held his heart lost
She looks her hope not sure
He dare called she dare answered?
Clutching her bags she mounts the stairs
The university stairs to mount in years to come
He stood there on trembling feet waiting
She climbs on and up,on n up
Up the height their  hope clingy
He is up there she mounts up to him
At the seventh floor to  meet  him
As she makes it up all eyes on her trail;
Noticeably slim model of freshness
Admirably everyone to behold
She climbed up to him
Before him she stood
His call she dare answered.
Transfixed! He took her bag
Willingly  she gave him
The floor quakes! The feelings of not just two
The feelings of an age quakes
The hope of many quakes too
The seventh floor quakes!
The waiting room quakes
She enters with of all but him!
He Leads  her to a chair
Her tired Legs grateful.
A sachet of water he gave her
Her thirsty soul appreciative.
He loved her immediately!
She sips the water genuinely thirsty
And She saw the eyes!
His eyes  beholding her.
Her nerve quakes the water pours
Pouring on her chest her white shirt dampen
The chest thumping reveals her Breast
A beautifully moulded set of young Breast
Breast shaped by only the Almighty!
Breast only can be possessed by a Goddess.
Adorable set of gem like diamond points at him.
He looks on. All in the room looks on.
He breathes hard like he just climbed the stairs.
In shock he brought  out a brownish white handkerchief
Dampen  the  chest staining the wet area
She felt his hand. He touched her soul.
The seventh floor quakes the more
Quaking the very foundation of hearts in the room.
He looked her in the eyes , kissed her forehead
She quakes inside of her
His very soul sincerely stared
Her very innocence quakes.
He mutters this lines;
    ‘Be mine sweet Angel’
Her soul heard the lines from a distance
Transporting further the very quake
Whose after shock will last for years.
He was in his third year fed for himself
She was in her first year in daddy’s shadow.
Tortious was the climb
Broadlynarrow was the road
Choice was  a task
Trust…! a life bet
Two hearts-dice juggled
The quake was seconds still
Single mindedness was the decision
The mindful was n is the after shock.
Her friends bemoaned her
His friends fearful cheered him
Her mother cautiously careful
His mother hands off n up in prayer
Her father tearing n threatening.
Thundering his nerve to the brims
She remained obstinate n focused
He remained supportive n sacrificial
Sacrifices of an umbrella in the rain
She appreciated him. He protected her.
He provided the hanger for her  grip
She stretched her arms like the pumpkin tongue grips
The vow of  protections as a service  after graduation.
A service not to a fatherland but for truth
Truth of two souls in opposite divide.
The protection from unspoken facts
Facts only known to one n whispered to the other.
The bet on Trust not Love?
And four year stroll  past
For time crept in to birth a newness.
A new birth n a new day of destiny berthed
As fortune of two set sail
And another two stuck on the hyacinth.
She mounts the podium
He watched from afar in tears of joy
She was the best in the pac
He made it happened
Her mother esthetic n jubilant
Egoistic  father puffy with pride
The pac applauds success n true work
She worked for it. He saw to it.
A synergy of trust for result seem unattainable
Impossibility made possible
Success he desired but archived in her.
She is rewarded for excellence
He is rewarded for steadfastness
Her mother is rewarded for unspoken fear from shame
His mother is rewarded for daily travails in prayer
Her father is rewarded for money spent on trivialities.
The reward of one pervades a whole lot
Avalanches of rewards open n secrets.
UnOpen secret between father n daughter
Shared secret between him n her.
She collects her award admits ululations inside of her
He feels n knows her pain admits the atmosphere
Her mother is carried away like the gele she is wearing
Her father boastful in an atmospheric  blindness for his money's efforts
Her hearts inner workings is detached from the day's euphoria
He standing at the distance transmutes her experiences
Experiences of a father who knew only his desires
Desires bought n explored from every available mode.
The university was a safe heaven for her
He provided the guard and guidance she lacked at home
Her encounter of him n the journey to the seventh floor
Shaped her to today n assured her of tomorrow
True  love stands like strong pilar  
He longed n gave love he wanted n  never had
She believe n trust for him save the climb
She is a daughter her father only knew  in the dark
He is a friend who is a true father n never had one.
Drives n ponderings of the hearts
The podium is for gallery elicit joyousness
Joyous celebrations into the night.
The night comes with  it's sounds
Darkness comes with it's secretes
Tides n storms in dark hearts alleyway
Lighten flashes schemes it's way in the dark tides of time
The heart thunders in ‘tick ****’ motion of time
Tale  trail to time
Quest of two in timescape alley
Time: a healer n a judge?
Time n space bridged reward
A collusion of hatred n love rewarded.
The reward of time is unquantifiable  
And timeless is its weight.
The weight of love prompted a search
A search for his father
A search for her true father
A father who constantly seek n desires  daughter’s nakedness?
A mother whose silence at the face of such shame?
Truth bound by time  rebounds in space
Complicit of two self lying marriage between man n woman
Rebounds in  two young honest lovers
The happiness of youthful individual being sacrificed?
The weight of a DNA is  love for him and her
And hate for father n mother .
Her mother was shameless n still is
His father was irresponsible n still is.
The early light dispels darkness
Darkness of the heart under a fretsaw
Patterning  in style  actions of the dark
Every secret did have open reward
She was n is her mother from a man she refused her knowing
He was his father Who absconded 33 years ago
Hiding in the arms of another woman bewitched?
Likes begets  likes in a mate of two deluded snakes
Living in the dark holes of there night
Orchestrating symphonies of lies n lies
And now likes dogs leak their  poisonous venom.
At dawn light gains its penetrations
Penetrating the very marrow of truth….!
As Morning dawns with it's dews
A climb to the seventh floor was the dew.
And light melts away this dew
Shining in the life of two young fellows
Who loved from their souls.

Lowly rivers flow
dark made up aroused exposed
yelping skin to skin.

At anchor in Hampton Roads we lay,
      On board of the Cumberland, sloop-of-war;
And at times from the fortress across the bay
    The alarum of drums swept past,
    Or a bugle blast
      From the camp on the shore.

Then far away to the south uprose
      A little feather of snow-white smoke,
And we knew that the iron ship of our foes
    Was steadily steering its course
    To try the force
      Of our ribs of oak.

Down upon us heavily runs,
      Silent and sullen, the floating fort;
Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns,
    And leaps the terrible death,
    With fiery breath,
      From each open port.

We are not idle, but send her straight
      Defiance back in a full broadside!
As hail rebounds from a roof of slate,
    Rebounds our heavier hail
    From each iron scale
      Of the monster’s hide.

“Strike your flag!” the rebel cries,
      In his arrogant old plantation strain.
“Never!” our gallant Morris replies;
    “It is better to sink than to yield!”
    And the whole air pealed
      With the cheers of our men.

Then, like a kraken huge and black,
      She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp!
Down went the Cumberland all a wrack,
    With a sudden shudder of death,
    And the cannon’s breath
      For her dying gasp.

Next morn, as the sun rose over the bay,
      Still floated our flag at the mainmast head.
Lord, how beautiful was Thy day!
    Every waft of the air
    Was a whisper of prayer,
      Or a dirge for the dead.

**! brave hearts that went down in the seas
      Ye are at peace in the troubled stream;
**! brave land! with hearts like these,
    Thy flag, that is rent in twain,
    Shall be one again,
      And without a seam!

Miklos Radnoti [1909-1944], a Hungarian Jew and a fierce anti-fascist, is perhaps the greatest of the Holocaust poets. His often-harrowing bio appears after his poems. The "postcard" poems were written on a death march that ended with him being executed and buried in a mass grave.

Postcard 1
by Miklós Radnóti, written August 30, 1944
translation by Michael R. Burch

Out of Bulgaria, the great wild roar of the artillery thunders,
resounds on the mountain ridges, rebounds, then ebbs into silence
while here men, beasts, wagons and imagination all steadily increase;
the road whinnies and bucks, neighing; the maned sky gallops;
and you are eternally with me, love, constant amid all the chaos,
glowing within my conscience—incandescent, intense.
Somewhere within me, dear, you abide forever—
still, motionless, mute, like an angel stunned to silence by death
or a beetle hiding in the heart of a rotting tree.



Postcard 2
by Miklós Radnóti, written October 6, 1944 near Crvenka, Serbia
translation by Michael R. Burch

A few miles away they're incinerating
the haystacks and the houses,
while squatting here on the fringe of this pleasant meadow,
the shell-shocked peasants sit quietly smoking their pipes.
Now, here, stepping into this still pond, the little shepherd girl
sets the silver water a-ripple
while, leaning over to drink, her flocculent sheep
seem to swim like drifting clouds.



Postcard 3
by Miklós Radnóti, written October 24, 1944 near Mohács, Hungary
translation by Michael R. Burch

The oxen dribble ****** spittle;
the men pass blood in their ****.
Our stinking regiment halts, a horde of perspiring savages,
adding our aroma to death's repulsive stench.



Published: “Postcard 4” was published by Poetry Super Highway in 2019 as part of their 21st Annual Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) Poetry Issue

Postcard 4
by Miklós Radnóti, his final poem, written October 31, 1944 near Szentkirályszabadja, Hungary
translation by Michael R. Burch

I toppled beside him—his body already taut,
tight as a string just before it snaps,
shot in the back of the head.
"This is how you’ll end too; just lie quietly here,"
I whispered to myself, patience blossoming from dread.
"Der springt noch auf," the voice above me jeered;
I could only dimly hear
through the congealing blood slowly sealing my ear.

Translator's note: "Der springt noch auf" means something like "That one is still twitching."



Letter to My Wife
by Miklós Radnóti
translated by Michael R. Burch

This is a poem written during the Holocaust in Lager Heidenau, in the mountains above Zagubica, August-September, 1944

Deep down in the darkness hell awaits—silent, mute.
Silence screams in my ears, so I shout,
but no one hears or answers, wherever they are;
while sad Serbia, astounded by war,
and you are so far,
so incredibly distant.

Still my heart encounters yours in my dreams
and by day I hear yours sound in my heart again;
and so I am still, even as the great mountain
ferns slowly stir and murmur around me,
coldly surrounding me.

When will I see you? How can I know?
You who were calm and weighty as a Psalm,
beautiful as a shadow, more beautiful than light,
the One I could always find, whether deaf, mute, blind,
lie hidden now by this landscape; yet from within
you flash on my sight like flickering images on film.

You once seemed real but now have become a dream;
you have tumbled back into the well of teenage fantasy.
I jealously question whether you'll ever adore me;
whether—speak!—
from youth's highest peak
you will yet be my wife.

I become hopeful again,
as I awaken on this road where I formerly had fallen.
I know now that you are my wife, my friend, my peer—
but, alas, so far! Beyond these three wild frontiers,
fall returns. Will you then depart me?
Yet the memory of our kisses remains clear.

Now sunshine and miracles seem disconnected things.
Above me I see a bomber squadron's wings.
Skies that once matched your eyes' blue sheen
have clouded over, and in each infernal machine
the bombs writhe with their lust to dive.
Despite them, somehow I remain alive.

Miklós Radnóti [1909-1944], a Hungarian Jew and a fierce anti-fascist, is perhaps the greatest of the Holocaust poets. He was born in Budapest in 1909. In 1930, at the age of 21, he published his first collection of poems, Pogány köszönto (Pagan Salute). His next book, Újmódi pásztorok éneke (Modern Shepherd's Song) was confiscated on grounds of "indecency," earning him a light jail sentence. In 1931 he spent two months in Paris, where he visited the "Exposition coloniale" and began translating African poems and folk tales into Hungarian. In 1934 he obtained his Ph.D. in Hungarian literature. The following year he married Fanni (Fifi) Gyarmati; they settled in Budapest. His book Járkálj csa, halálraítélt! (Walk On, Condemned!) won the prestigious Baumgarten Prize in 1937. Also in 1937 he wrote his Cartes Postales (Postcards from France), which were precurors to his darker images of war, Razglednicas (Picture Postcards). During World War II, Radnóti published translations of Virgil, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Eluard, Apollinare and Blaise Cendras in Orpheus nyomában. From 1940 on, he was forced to serve on forced labor battalions, at times arming and disarming explosives on the Ukrainian front. In 1944 he was deported to a compulsory labor camp near Bor, Yugoslavia. As the Nazis retreated from the approaching Russian army, the Bor concentration camp was evacuated and its internees were led on a forced march through Yugoslavia and Hungary. During what became his death march, Radnóti recorded poetic images of what he saw and experienced. After writing his fourth and final "Postcard," Radnóti was badly beaten by a soldier annoyed by his scribblings. Soon thereafter, the weakened poet was shot to death, on November 9, 1944, along with 21 other prisoners who unable to walk. Their mass grave was exhumed after the war and Radnóti's poems were found on his body by his wife, inscribed in pencil in a small Serbian exercise book. Radnóti's posthumous collection, Tajtékos ég (Clouded Sky, or Foaming Sky) contains odes to his wife, letters, poetic fragments and his final Postcards. Unlike his murderers, Miklós Radnóti never lost his humanity, and his empathy continues to live on and shine through his work.

Keywords/Tags: Miklos Radnoti, Holocaust poet, Hungary, Hungarian Jew, anti-fascist, translation, mrbholo



Death Fugue
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come dusk;
we drink you come midday, come morning, come night;
we drink you and drink you.
We’re digging a grave like a hole in the sky;
there’s sufficient room to lie there.
The man of the house plays with vipers; he writes
in the Teutonic darkness, “Your golden hair Margarete...”
He composes by starlight, whistles hounds to stand by,
whistles Jews to dig graves, where together they’ll lie.
He commands us to strike up bright tunes for the dance!

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come dusk;
we drink you come dawn, come midday, come night;
we drink you and drink you.
The man of the house plays with serpents; he writes...
he writes as the night falls, “Your golden hair Margarete...
Your ashen hair Shulamith...”
We are digging dark graves where there’s more room, on high.
His screams, “Hey you, dig there!” and “Hey you, sing and dance!”
He grabs his black nightstick, his eyes pallid blue,
screaming, “Hey you―dig deeper! You others―sing, dance!”

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come dusk;
we drink you come midday, come morning, come night;
we drink you and drink you.
The man of the house writes, “Your golden hair Margarete...
Your ashen hair Shulamith...” as he cultivates snakes.
He screams, “Play Death more sweetly! Death’s the master of Germany!”
He cries, “Scrape those dark strings, soon like black smoke you’ll rise
to your graves in the skies; there’s sufficient room for Jews there!”

Black milk of daybreak, we drink you come midnight;
we drink you come midday; Death’s the master of Germany!
We drink you come dusk; we drink you and drink you...
He’s a master of Death, his pale eyes deathly blue.
He fires leaden slugs, his aim level and true.
He writes as the night falls, “Your golden hair Margarete...”
He unleashes his hounds, grants us graves in the skies.
He plays with his serpents; Death’s the master of Germany...

“Your golden hair Margarete...
your ashen hair Shulamith...”



O, Little Root of a Dream
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O, little root of a dream
you enmire me here;
I’m undermined by blood―
made invisible,
death's possession.

Touch the curve of my face,
that there may yet be an earthly language of ardor,
that someone else’s eyes
may somehow still see me,
though I’m blind,

here where you
deny me voice.



You Were My Death
by Paul Celan
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You were my death;
I could hold you
when everything abandoned me―
even breath.



Primo Levi Holocaust Poem Translations

Shema
by Primo Levi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You who live secure
in your comfortable homes,
who return each evening to find
warm food and welcoming faces...

Consider: is this a 'man'
who slogs through the mud,
who knows no peace,
who fights for crusts of bread,
who dies at another man's whim,
at his 'yes' or his 'no.'

Consider: is this is a 'woman'
bald and bereft of a name
because she lacks the strength to remember,
her eyes as void and her womb as frigid
as a winter frog's.

Consider that such horrors have indeed been!

I commend these words to you.
Engrave them in your hearts
when you lounge in your beds
and again when you rise,
when you venture outside.
Repeat them to your children,
or may your houses crumble
and disease render you helpless
so that even your offspring avert their eyes.



Buna
by Primo Levi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Mangled feet, cursed earth,
the long interminable line in the gray morning
as Buna smokes corpses through industrious chimneys...

Another gray day like every other day awaits us.

The terrible whistle shrilly announces dawn:
'Rise, wretched multitudes, with your lifeless faces,
welcome the monotonous hell of the mud...
another day's suffering has begun! '

Weary companion, I know you well.

I see your dead eyes, my disconsolate friend.
In your breast you bear the burden of cold, deprivation, emptiness.
Life long ago broke what remained of the courage within you.

Colorless one, you once were a real man;
a considerable woman once accompanied you.

But now, my invisible companion, you lack even a name.
So forsaken, you are unable to weep.
So poor in spirit, you can no longer grieve.
So tired, your flesh can no longer shiver with fear...

My once-strong man, now spent,
were we to meet again
in some other world, beneath some sunnier sun,
with what unfamiliar faces would we recognize each other?

Note: Buna was the largest Auschwitz sub-camp, with around 40,000 'workers' who had been enslaved by the Nazis. Primo Levi called the Jews of Buna the 'slaves of slaves' because the other slaves outranked them.



Ber Horowitz Holocaust Poetry Translations

Der Himmel
'The Heavens'
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These skies
are leaden, heavy, gray...
I long for a pair
of deep blue eyes.

The birds have fled
far overseas;
Tomorrow I'll migrate too,
I said...

These gloomy autumn days
it rains and rains.
Woe to the bird
Who remains...



Doctorn
'Doctors'
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Early this morning I bandaged
the lilac tree outside my house;
I took thin branches that had broken away
and patched their wounds with clay.

My mother stood there watering
her window-level flower bed;
The morning sun, quite motherly,
kissed us both on our heads!

What a joy, my child, to heal!
Finished doctoring, or not?
The eggs are nicely poached
And the milk's a-boil in the ***.



Broit
'Bread'
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Night. Exhaustion. Heavy stillness. Why?
On the hard uncomfortable floor the exhausted people lie.

Flung everywhere, scattered over the broken theater floor,
the exhausted people sleep. Night. Late. Too tired to snore.

At midnight a little boy cries wildly into the gloom:
'Mommy, I'm afraid! Let's go home! '

His mother, reawakened into this frightful place,
presses her frightened child even closer to her breast …

'If you cry, I'll leave you here, all alone!
A little boy must sleep... this, now, is our new home.'

Night. Exhaustion. Heavy stillness all around,
exhausted people sleeping on the hard ground.



'My Lament'
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Nothingness enveloped me
as tender green toadstools
lie blanketed by snow
with its thick, heavy prayer shawl …
After that, nothing could hurt me …



Wladyslaw Szlengel Holocaust Poem Translation

Excerpts from 'A Page from the Deportation Diary'
by Wladyslaw Szlengel
translation by Michael R. Burch

I saw Janusz Korczak walking today,
leading the children, at the head of the line.
They were dressed in their best clothes—immaculate, if gray.
Some say the weather wasn't dismal, but fine.

They were in their best jumpers and laughing (not loud) ,
but if they'd been soiled, tell me—who could complain?
They walked like calm heroes through the haunted crowd,
five by five, in a whipping rain.

The pallid, the trembling, watched high overhead,
through barely cracked windows—pale, transfixed with dread.

And now and then, from the high, tolling bell
a strange moan escaped, like a sea gull's torn cry.
Their 'superiors' looked on, their eyes hard as stone.
So let us not flinch, as they march on, to die.

Footfall... then silence... the cadence of feet...
O, who can console them, their last mile so drear?
The church bells peal on, over shocked Leszno Street.
Will Jesus Christ save them? The high bells career.

No, God will not save them. Nor you, friend, nor I.
But let us not flinch, as they march on, to die.

No one will offer the price of their freedom.
No one will proffer a single word.
His eyes hard as gavels, the silent policeman
agrees with the priest and his terrible Lord:
'Give them the Sword! '

At the town square there is no intervention.
No one tugs Schmerling's sleeve. No one cries
'Rescue the children! ' The air, thick with tension,
reeks with the odor of *****, and lies.

How calmly he walks, with a child in each arm:
Gut Doktor Korczak, please keep them from harm!

A fool rushes up with a reprieve in hand:
'Look Janusz Korczak—please look, you've been spared! '
No use for that. One resolute man,
uncomprehending that no one else cared
enough to defend them,
his choice is to end with them.



Ninety-Three Daughters of Israel
a Holocaust poem by Chaya Feldman
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We washed our bodies
and cleansed ourselves;
we purified our souls
and became clean.

Death does not terrify us;
we are ready to confront him.

While alive we served God
and now we can best serve our people
by refusing to be taken prisoner.

We have made a covenant of the heart,
all ninety-three of us;
together we lived and learned,
and now together we choose to depart.

The hour is upon us
as I write these words;
there is barely enough time to transcribe this prayer...

Brethren, wherever you may be,
honor the Torah we lived by
and the Psalms we loved.

Read them for us, as well as for yourselves,
and someday when the Beast
has devoured his last prey,
we hope someone will say Kaddish for us:
we ninety-three daughters of Israel.

Amen

In 1943 Meir Shenkolevsky, the secretary of the world Bais Yaakov movement and a member of the Central Committee of Agudas Israel in New York, received a letter from Chaya Feldman: 'I don't know when you will get this letter and if you still will remember me. When this letter arrives, I will no longer be alive. In a few hours, everything will be past. We are here in four rooms,93 girls ages 14 to 22, all of us Bais Yaakov teachers. On July 27, Gestapo agents came, took us out of our apartment and threw us into a dark room. We only have water to drink. The younger girls are very frightened, but I comfort them that in a short while, we will be together with our mother Sara [Sara Shnirer, the founder of the Bais Yaakov Seminary]. Yesterday they took us out, washed us and took all our clothes. They left us only shirts and said that today, German soldiers will come to visit us. We all swore to ourselves that we will die together. The Germans don't know that the bath they gave us was the immersion before our deaths: we all prepared poison. When the soldiers come, we will drink the poison. We are all saying Viduy throughout the day. We are not afraid of anything. We only have one request from you: Say Kaddish for 93 bnos Yisroel! Soon we will be with our mother Sara. Signed, Chaya Feldman from Cracow.'



Miryam Ulinover Holocaust Poetry Translations

Girl Without Soap
by Miryam Ulinover
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

As I sat so desolate,
threadbare with poverty,
the inspiration came to me
to make a song of my need!

My blouse is heavy with worries,
so now it's time to wash:
the weave's become dull yellow
close to my breast.

It wrings my brain with old worries
and presses it down like a canker.
If only some kind storekeeper
would give me detergent on credit!

But no, he did not give it!
Instead, he was stiffer than starch!
Despite my dark, beautiful eyes
he remained aloof and arch.

I am estranged from fresh white wash;
my laundry's gone gray with old dirt;
but my body still longs to sing the song
of a clean and fresh white shirt.



Meydl on Kam
Girl Without Comb
by Miryam Ullinover
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The note preceding the poem:
'Sitting where the night makes its nest
are my songs like boarders, awaiting flight's quests.'

The teeth of the comb are broken
A comb is necessary―more necessary than bread.
O, who will come to comb my braid,
or empty the gray space occupying my head?

Note: the second verse of 'Meydl on Kam' is mostly unreadable and the last two lines are missing.
After that, nothing could hurt me …



Yitzkhak Viner Holocaust Poem Translations

Let it be Quiet in my Room!
by Yitzkhak Viner
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Let it be quiet in my room!
Let me hear the birds outside singing,
And let their innocent trilling
Lull away my heart's interior gloom…

Listen, outside, drayman's horse and cart,
If you scare the birds away,
You will wake me from my dream-play
And wring the last drop of joy from my heart…

Don't cough mother! Father, no words!
It'd be a shame to spoil the calm
And silence the sweet-sounding balm
of the well-fed little birds…

Hush, little sisters and brothers! Be strong!
Don't weep and cry for drink and food;
Try to remember in silence the good.
Please do not disturb my weaving of songs…



My Childhood
by Yitzkhak Viner
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

In the years of my childhood, in Balut's yards,
Living with my parents in an impoverished day,
I remember my hunger; with my friends I would play
And bake loaves of bread out of muddy clay…

By baking mud-breads, we dreamed away hunger:
the closest and worst of the visitors kids know;
so passed the summer's heat through the gutters,
so winters passed with their freezing snow.

Outside today all is gray, sunk in snow,
Though the roofs and the gate are silvered and white.
I lie on a bed warmed now only by rags
and look through grim windows brightened by ice.

Father left early to try to find work;
In an unlit room I and my mother stay.
It's cold, we're hungry, we have nothing to eat:
How I lust to bake one tiny bread-loaf of clay…

Balut (Baluty)   was a poor Jewish suburb of Lodz, Poland which became a segregated ghetto under the Nazis.



It Is Good to Have Two Eyes
by Yitzkhak Viner
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I.

It is good to have two eyes.
Anything I want, they can see:
Boats, trains, horses and cars,
everything around me.

But sometimes I just want to see
Someone's laughter, sweet…
Instead I see his corpse outstretched,
Lying in the street…

When I want to see his laughter
his eyes are closed forever…

II.

It is good to have two ears.
Anything I want, they can hear:
Songs, plays, concerts, kind words,
Street cars, bells, anything near.

I want to hear kids' voices sing,
but my ears only hear the shrill cries
and fear
of two children watching a man as he dies…

When I long for a youthful song
I hear children weeping hard and long…

III.

It is good to have two hands.
Every year I can till the land.
Banging iron night and day
Fashions wheels to plow the clay…

But now wheels are silent and still
And people's hands are obsolete;
The houses grow cold and dark
As hands dig a grave in defeat…

Still it is good to have two hands:
I write poems in which the truth still stands.



After My Death
by Chaim Nachman Bialik
translation by Michael R. Burch

Say this when you eulogize me:
Here was a man — now, ****, he's gone!
He died before his time.
The music of his life suddenly ground to a halt..
Such a pity! There was another song in him, somewhere,
But now it's lost,
forever.
What a pity! He had a violin,
a living, voluble soul
to which he uttered
the secrets of his heart,
setting its strings vibrating,
save the one he kept inviolate.
Back and forth his supple fingers danced;
one string alone remained mesmerized,
yet unheard.
Such a pity!
All his life the string quivered,
quavering silently,
yearning for its song, its mate,
as a heart saddens before its departure.
Despite constant delays it waited daily,
mutely beseeching its savior, Love,
who lingered, loitered, tarried incessantly
and never came.
Great is the pain!
There was a man — now, ****, he is no more!
The music of his life suddenly interrupted.
There was another song in him
But now it is lost
forever.



Chaim Nachman Bialik Holocaust Poem Translations

On The Slaughter
by Chaim Nachman Bialik
translation by Michael R. Burch

Merciful heavens, have pity on me!
If there is a God approachable by men
as yet I have not found him—
Pray for me!

For my heart is dead,
prayers languish upon my tongue,
my right hand has lost its strength
and my hope has been crushed, undone.

How long? Oh, when will this nightmare end?
How long? Hangman, traitor,
here's my neck—
rise up now, and slaughter!

Behead me like a dog—your arm controls the axe
and the whole world is a scaffold to me
though we—the chosen few—
were once recipients of the Pacts.

Executioner! , my blood's a paltry prize—
strike my skull and the blood of innocents will rain
down upon your pristine uniform again and again,
staining your raiment forever.

If there is Justice—quick, let her appear!
But after I've been blotted out, should she reveal her face,
let her false scales be overturned forever
and the heavens reek with the stench of her disgrace.

You too arrogant men, with your cruel injustice,
suckled on blood, unweaned of violence:
cursed be the warrior who cries 'Avenge! ' on a maiden;
such vengeance was never contemplated even by Satan.

Let innocents' blood drench the abyss!
Let innocents' blood seep down into the depths of darkness,
eat it away and undermine
the rotting foundations of earth.



Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.



Hear, O Israel!
by Erich Fried
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

When we were the oppressed,
I was one with you,
but how can we remain one
now that you have become the oppressor?

Your desire
was to become powerful, like the nations
who murdered you;
now you have, indeed, become like them.

You have outlived those
who abused you;
so why does their cruelty
possess you now?

You also commanded your victims:
'Remove your shoes! '
Like the scapegoat,
you drove them into the wilderness,
into the great mosque of death
with its burning sands.
But they would not confess the sin
you longed to impute to them:
the imprint of their naked feet
in the desert sand
will outlast the silhouettes
of your bombs and tanks.

So hear, O Israel …
hear the whimpers of your victims
echoing your ancient sufferings …

'Hear, O Israel! ' was written in 1967, after the Six Day War.



What It Is
by Erich Fried
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

It is nonsense
says reason.
It is what it is
says Love.

It is a dangerous
says discretion.
It is terrifying
says fear.
It is hopeless
says insight.
It is what it is
says Love.

It is ludicrous
says pride.
It is reckless
says caution.
It is impractical
says experience.
It is what it is
says Love.



An Attempt
by Erich Fried
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I have attempted
while working
to think only of my work
and not of you,
but I am encouraged
to have been so unsuccessful.



Humorless
by Erich Fried
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The boys
throw stones
at the frogs
in jest.

The frogs
die
in earnest.



Bulldozers
by Erich Fried
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Israel's bulldozers
have confirmed their kinship
to bulldozers in Beirut
where the bodies of massacred Palestinians
lie buried under the rubble of their former homes.

And it has been reported
that in the heart of Israel
the Memorial Cemetery
for the massacred dead of Deir Yassin
has been destroyed by bulldozers...
'Not intentional, ' it's said,
'A slight oversight during construction work.'

Also the ******
of the people of Sabra and Shatila
shall become known only as an oversight
in the process of building a great Zionist power.

The villagers of Deir Yassin were massacred in 1948 by Israeli Jews operating under the command of future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's. The New York Times reported 254 villagers murdered, most of them women, children and elderly men. Later, the village cemetery was destroyed by Israeli bulldozers as Deir Yassin, like hundreds of other Palestinian villages, was destroyed.

Sabra and Shatila in Beirut, Lebanon were two Palestinian refugee camps destroyed during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It has been estimated that as many as 3,500 people were murdered. In 1982, an International Commission concluded that Israelis were, directly or indirectly, responsible. The Israeli government established the Kahan Commission to investigate the massacre, and found another future Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, personally responsible for having permitted militias to enter the camps despite a risk of violence against the refugees.

Since 1967 the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions has reported more than 24,000 home demolitions... hence the 'kinship' of the bulldozers of Israel to those used to destroy Palestinian homes in Lebanon.



Credo
by Saul Tchernichovsky
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Laugh at all my silly dreams!
Laugh, and I'll repeat anew
that I still believe in man,
just as I believe in you.

By the passion of man's spirit
ancient bonds are being shed:
for his heart desires freedom
as the body does its bread.

My noble soul cannot be led
to the golden calf of scorn,
for I still believe in man,
as every child is human-born.

Life and love and energy
in our hearts will surge and beat,
till our hopes bring forth a heaven
from the earth beneath our feet.

Bump,thump,bump,thump.... the bass cases shake and quake  
Secreting heat, my skin blushes, that rush of a new secret crush.
She passes and her scent renders all around helpless.
The DJ's plush talons tow and myre you soul's wires.  
Seeping through, the beak crushing your conscience,  
falling, sleep down, the sound grounds you.  
Sowing the seeds of desire on the stone below.  
Called by the thumping, bumping beat,  
You jump from your seat into a market of meat, a sea of shifting feet.  
10,000 lights spin like sugar bright.  
Blood fuels your feet,  
feats of flight,  
blurs of sight.  
Spinning like cotton candy with all your might.  
Body overheating, heart overbeating, grains of lust over seeding.  
Your scars begin to heal as glassy eyes not blue appeal to your "at first sight" senses.  
Senses slow there motion to primal, tingling too much,  
not too much to touch, no sting as such.  
Such a blissful kiss t'would be from she before thee.  
Snip the wire.  
Feed the desire.  
The need grows to fan passion fire.  
The potent scent of dripping skin steams up like the devotional incline of nine combined love potions.  
Love, as real love, survives as only a notion in this moving motion of lust's contrived plot...  
But to feel alive, even for a moment,  
love's emotion fails... drawing bust to the ever opulent opponent of lust;  
a proponent to disguise the potent demise of the heart's conscious component.  
Gas and smoke blows.  
Beats high and low.  
The dancing mass of suppressed woes ebbs and flows,  
capturing the seconds, snatching your essence, rapturing your ethics.  
Feeding the peak you seek, heart weak, roaring soul silenced to squeak.  
Waning away your stay with the sweating sea of swing and sway leaves you adrift.  
The waves of the DJ begin to hammer you into enamerment  
Did this quaking wake the sober state of your forsakenness?  
That complaicent stained vacant place aching to be filled.  
A painful, dizzying blood rush floods your mind and muck the feeling first struck secret love crush  
Were the judgment-blurring thoughts occurring so alluring? They fought off pure thoughts sought before she heart-stopped me.  
In light of a moment caught, wrought with knots of naughty thoughts.  
Light and sound and the thumping, bumping ground drown your bounds. 
No more, no more. 
"Now I remember" internally sounds, profound rebounds. 
Lore from before when the last passing blue-eyed leggy lass tore the door off your soul's core.  
No more, no more.  
The crush becomes dust. You become stone.  
Cut to the bone. No seed will be sewn.
You face the floor and breathe. alone.
  
 "Cameo Theater South Beach"   
R. Craig David-Copyright 1995

I pull up to the stop
Sign and side-blow a little smoke
Out of the window.
Wait for the last burn
Of the cigarette
Then turn to green.

One glance in the mirror
And there’s a young woman
In a Tesla with long brown
Curly hair and bright red lips.
Singing like A Walmart movie star.
**** me now sighs.

We pretend to not play mirror lick.
2 minutes trinkets.

Though I sit up a little straighter
Suddenly self wrongsciouss
And then notice
That my hair is sticking
Up just like a who from whoreville
Ah **** it.

And she lets a smile out on bail
Though I think it’s probably
At the old man waiting to cross
With way too many Christmas bags
of shopping.

And we drive on this endless
Highway of hooks and tumours, one night stands
And one life stands
And pretty moments and heartbreaks and rebounds.
And winning lottery tickets.
And Cuban cigars.
And our hearts call room service
In dive motels.
And then we find someone to laugh with.

and my car is ****
And my hair is going silver
And I hit 40 like an uppercut.

And all of us patch up the cracks
And take the pins out of other peoples voodoo dolls
And dance with what we have.
And do our best to punch above
And throw a trick still.
Like everything was beautiful once
And now even if we fade just into accolades.

We wear a A lucky shirt
A new pair of shoes hung up on the telephone wires
A revenge dress to help undress
The bitterness

A little blue that changes colours
Sometimes
As we drive away

No more a stranger
Than we ever were before.