When the paintbrush of the day
is tucked away
and the sunset dipped
in the forest of the night
the moon wanes and waxes
down the hills of stars  
atop that shady wrap.

Who peeps in
where the sleeping beauty wakes
is any one guess
nor it's a amateur's business.

Far from the half lit astral canopy
any bucket lowered  
deep down on the ground
into a barrowed well of colours
comes up with a Joseph of Cannon
the firesome story goes on.
The same fire burner
is also the same fire extinguisher
Alexander the Great intrigued life water
cool serene cup of Ab-e Hayat elixir!

The face of Earth is for no one
King Solomon or the great
Alexander the believers.
Nor for disbeliever
Nebuchadnezzar.

Hell or Paradise neither
is on the face of Earth.
What lives is in the heart!

Is it gone slipped out of the net
the time is on the fly?
Bask in the shadow is not too far,
take a walk down the sun.

Let the firesome stands tall
up the mountain of its colour splendour.
The bumble bees know there are
more on the edges of the spectral.
The moon only dips in the black earth
and scoops a black mole for every star!

The giant beauty in the night is more
it does a matter what a wee hour you eye on!  
Scientists say the star vanishes in the black hole
maybe it doesn’t want to come off the locks
but how did Alexander the Great sniff out
there was elixir on the other side of the pool?

A thought crosses my mind as if a moonlight
passes a sleeping one that promptly wakes up
and feels like showering in the moonlight
the sky isn't big nor the stars are far
but the planet earth by sea is bigger.
Every star loves to slide into the sea in the moonlight
perhaps the glowing moon on its forehead did it first!
Squeezed earth breaks out where it apparently ends
more is in the zero-circle, pi is transcended!
Let's taste, he sets out for the end of the globe.
on the way he goes, walks in chiaroscuro
down the moving planets in light and shadow.

If the seven seas splash out in a lofty billow
sets out on the cloud for the blue sky he won’t stop
because the empty cup is refilled there is a elixir drop!  

Up high the star in the black holes delights in locks
deep down the earth the moon delves in a black mole.
All is dark matter the light is over the burnt Mt.Sinai
the only cool rose Moses down the fire is in an elixir dew,
the watermark, from the untouchable a touching cue.
The secret sauce of life just a glance turns the sun to brew
the whole stars mirroring sea in the night slides into a dew!

Of Civilization and Disenchantment
by Michael R. Burch

Suddenly uncomfortable
to stay at my grandfather's house ―
actually his third new wife's,
in her daughter's bedroom
― one interminable summer
with nothing to do,
all the meals served cold,
even beans and peas...

Lacking the words to describe
ah! , those pearl-luminous estuaries ―
strange omens, incoherent nights.

Seeing the flares of the river barges
illuminating Memphis,
city of bluffs and dying splendors.

Drifting toward Alexandria,
Pharos, Rhakotis, Djoser's fertile delta,
lands at the beginning of a new time and "civilization."

Leaving behind sixty miles of unbroken cemetery,
Alexander's corpse floating seaward,
bobbing, milkwhite, in a jar of honey.

Memphis shall be waste and desolate,
without an inhabitant.
Or so the people dreamed, in chains.

Published by The Centrifugal Eye and The Centrifugal Eye Fifth Anniversary Anthology. Keywords/Tags: Memphis, river, barges, bluffs, Alexandria, Pharos, Rhakotis, Djoser, Alexander, waste, desolate

Я вас любил ("I Loved You")

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837) was a Russian poet, playwright and novelist. He has been called Russia's greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. These are my modern English translations of Pushkin poems, epigrams and quotes …

I Loved You
by Alexander Pushkin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
I loved you once … perhaps I love you still …
perhaps such erratic flickerings remain.
But please don’t let my feelings trouble you;
I do not wish to cause you further pain.

I loved you … thus the hopelessness I knew …
the jealousy, the shyness and the pain,
resulted in my hope that somehow you
might find the grace to fall in love again.

2.
I loved you … perhaps I love you still …
perhaps for a while such emotions may remain.
But please don’t let my feelings trouble you;
I do not wish to cause you further pain.

I loved you … thus the hopelessness I knew …
The jealousy, the diffidence, the pain
resulted in two hearts so wholly true
the gods might grant us leave to love again.

3.
I loved you once, and love might still be living,
its fading flame concealed within my core,
But please don't let this fill you with misgiving:
I do not want to hurt you anymore.

In hopeless, silent love I nearly perished:
It made me jealous, and it scared me too.
But now I pray that someday you’ll be cherished
By someone who will love you as I do.

The original Russian poem:

Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может,
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.
Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам бог любимой быть другим.



Friendship
by Alexander Pushkin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What's “friendship”? The hangover's daze,
The mild aftermath of outrage,
Exchanges in a wounded ego’s haze,
The humiliation of patronage.



I Outlasted Every Desire
by Alexander Pushkin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I outlasted every desire;
for I and my dreams had to part.
Now grief alone is left, entire,
from gleanings of a barren heart.
The maelstroms of Fate
have left my erstwhile laurel stripped;
thus I live alone without a mate
and face my end, thus, ill-equipped.
Thus on a naked tree-limb, shorn
by relentless winter's furious chill,
a single leaf, too lately born,
unseasonal, lies trembling still.



Untitled

I've lived to embalm my desires,
for my golden dreams to corrode to rust;
now all that's left are banked fires
that leave my heart ashen dust.
—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Struck down by the cruel winds of Fate,
my quaint springtime blooms disappear.
Now lonely and sad, I await
Winter’s wail that the end-time draws near.
—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Habit is Heaven's tame redress:
it tugs down the skirts of Happiness.
—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Till, conquered by gusts of cold air,
as Winter approaches, I find,
on a branch that is otherwise bare,
trembling, a leaf left behind.
—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Whom to love, to trust and treasure,
who won’t betray us in the end?
Whose kindest thoughts will measure
our words as we intend?
—Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Then came a moment of realization:
I looked again and you were there,
a fleeting glimpse of perfection,
of all that’s exquisite and rare.
—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When I want to understand you,
I study your obscurities.
—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Never despise the translator, he's the courier of civilization.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Never despise the translator, he's the courier/connector/relay/conduit/Pony Express of civilization.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My whole life was covenanted to this meeting with you…—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I was not put here to entertain Tsars.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fear no insult, seek no crown, receive flattery and slander with equal indifference, and never argue with a fool.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Better ten thousand unrealized dreams than never to have dreamed at all.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

If only you knew the inferno within, which I attempt to tamp down with reason!—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The less we love women, the easier they are to charm.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As poetry requires inspiration, so does geometry.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ecstasy is a glass full of tea melting a sugar cube.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Unrequited love is not an affront but an incentive to excel next time.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Moral maxims are most useful when nothing else can excuse our failures.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Write for pleasure, publish for perks.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Write for pleasure, publish for pay/pelf/perks/plenty/plenitude/prosperity.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

An elevating illusion’s more enlightening than innumerable low truths.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Better an exalting illusion than ten thousand truths.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As long as I live in one heart, I remain immortal.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As long as I live in one heart, my memory’s immortal.—Alexander Pushkin, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Keywords/Tags: Russia, Russian, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, modern English translation, regret, remorse

Sword of Ishmael, robed in Assyria's mantle,
Consecrated of God, Prince of princes,
A Destroyer: the executioner of judgements.
A thorn driven deep into the heart of Jerusalem,
Tempting violent men, who pride in their strength,
as Excalibur and the Gordian Knot challenged
Arthur and Alexander.

Alexander of Macedonia this time
won’t U-turn from the might Gangaridai.
At the bubbling edge in the Indian subcontinent,
one would dare, taking his last plunge,
believing it here the proverbial Well of Life!

Yet Al Khwarizmi will discover the algebra,
drawing from ‘nothing,’ purely untouchable:
The Zero from the Indian pole.
Not a digit, not a number on its own, yet it’s all.
Every number jumps up in the zero loophole!
Then the whole number bows down into decimals,
escalating the hunts of the 1.618 golden ratios.

Plough through at your own pace
for the uncharted water, for ab-e-hayath.
Sip in a drop of elixir in this secured zone.
Sylhet is in the core, is written in stone.

What do these mean? I too wonder
down the line, I was intrigued by the Arab
and Indian tectonic plates’ slow dance.
Both rolled out, hugging each other
Then the Makkan soil lying at the heart of earth
gets exposed, with Sylhet’s soil it pairs up!
360 Sufi dynamos, mathematically a perfect circle,
find the match giving a perfect heads up
laid on the nine yard show the whole box of wax,
simply inking the vivo jump on the storylines.

What’s under the tectonic-rug at the bottom of the earth?
Shush softly, whisper—the heavens might hear it out!
Hold on to the least bit, it could be all one wants.
The earth, the ocean, all started with a drop of water!
Let alone any well, which way did this original matter,
the first, primeval drop of water stream down
Has this alleyway been exposed here, or in Paradise?
Then how can we say we don't have a secret for Paradise?