Lament for the Makaris ("Lament for the Makers/Poets")
by William Dunbar [c. 1460-1530]
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

i who enjoyed good health and gladness
am overwhelmed now by life’s terrible sickness
and enfeebled with infirmity ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

our presence here is mere vainglory;
the false world is but transitory;
the flesh is frail; the Fiend runs free ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

the state of man is changeable:
now sound, now sick, now blithe, now dull,
now manic, now devoid of glee ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

no state on earth stands here securely;
as the wild wind shakes the willow tree,
so wavers this world’s vanity ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

Death leads the knights into the field
(unarmored under helm and shield)
sole Victor of each red mêlée ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

that strange, despotic Beast
tears from its mother’s breast
the babe, full of benignity ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

He takes the champion of the hour,
the captain of the highest tower,
the beautiful damsel in full flower ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

He spares no lord for his elegance,
nor clerk for his intelligence;
His dreadful stroke no man can flee ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

artist, magician, scientist,
orator, debater, theologist,
must all conclude, so too, as we:
“how the fear of Death dismays me!”

in medicine the most astute
sawbones and surgeons all fall mute;
they cannot save themselves, or flee ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

i see the Makers among the unsaved;
the greatest of Poets all go to the grave;
He does not spare them their faculty ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

i have seen the Monster pitilessly devour
our noble Chaucer, poetry’s flower,
and Lydgate and Gower (great Trinity!) ...
how the fear of Death dismays me!

since He has taken my brothers all,
i know He will not let me live past the fall;
His next victim will be—poor unfortunate me!—
how the fear of Death dismays me!

there is no remedy for Death;
we all must prepare to relinquish breath
so that after we die, we may be set free
from “the fear of Death dismays me!”

This is my modern English translation of "Lament for the Makaris," an elegy by the great early Scottish poet William Dunbar [c. 1460-1530]. Dunbar was a court poet in the household of King James IV of Scotland. The Makaris were "makers," or poets. The original poem is a form of danse macabre, or "dance of death," in which people of all social classes are summoned by Death. The poem has a refrain: every fourth line is the Latin phrase "timor mortis conturbat me" ("the fear of death dismays me" or "disturbs/confounds me"). The poem was probably composed around 1508 A.D., when Dunbar was advancing in age and perhaps facing the prospect of death himself (it is not clear exactly when he died). In his famous poem Dunbar mentions other poets who passed away, including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, and John Gower. Dunbar is generally considered to have been the greatest Scottish poet before Robert Burns, and he is noted for his comedies, satires, and sometimes ribald language. Keywords/Tags: Dunbar, translation, Scottish, dialect, Scotland, lament, makaris,  makers, poets, mrbtr, danse, macabre, refrain, Latin, timor, mortis, conturbat, dirge, lamentation, eulogy, epitaph, death, dismay, sorrow, fear, terror, writing, death, evil, sympathy, sorrow



Sunset
by Michael R. Burch

This poem is dedicated to my grandfather, George Edwin Hurt

Between the prophecies of morning
and twilight’s revelations of wonder,
the sky is ripped asunder.

The moon lurks in the clouds,
waiting, as if to plunder
the dusk of its lilac iridescence,

and in the bright-tentacled sunset
we imagine a presence
full of the fury of lost innocence.

What we find within strange whorls of drifting flame,
brief patterns mauling winds deform and maim,
we recognize at once, but cannot name.

I think that I’m going crazy,
as all my thoughts are unclear and hazy,
the incident was a nightmare so dark,
that it left on me a permanent mark.
 
She was my guardian,
she was my best friend,
my mother was one in a trillion,
on whom I could always depend.
 
No one can ever take her place,
a mother will always hold a special spot in your heart,
even though she's been gone now for months and days,
yet it feels like this is just the start.
 
I can’t stop crying,
I see her everywhere,
to reach out to her is what I am trying,
but oh she is not really there.
 
I feel as if I’m dying from inside,
people all around try to bring me comfort,
but it’s like all the flowers around me have died,
and their comforting words seem to me as useless as the dirt.
 
I am missing her so much,
it’s beyond my capability to explain,
the memory of my mom's soft and gentle touch,
is something with me that will always remain.
 
I am numb,
I feel empty,
weightless such as a falling leaf,
the very leaf that settled on my mother’s grave,
that lies now in front of me.

After all she was my mother,
no one can understand how I feel,
I can lament all summer,
but this is something from what I have to heal.

How can the fireflies flit
from a bough to a highest place
just below the Milky Way,
without you here.

How can the blooms of summer
arise in your absence,
how can the cherish that
sparkles between young adults
conversing on a park bench -
go on, without us,
in my memory,
we walk by them,
holding hands, as,
we were once them.

Is this but a tragic dream -
as I pray over your
bedding of repose,
your gleaming white headstone,
in a long unwavering line
of other white headstones,
then, sweet assurance
speaks to me,
though the song of taps
separated us,
one day, the song of taps
will unite us.

My evening star stopped shining bright
It went off course, into the dark night
I saw it not, for it was.. perhaps a year
Or so it appeared to a brooding mind
I had nurtured it true, for my sore eyes
Every ev'ning, its twinkle w'd bring me
Delight; but off it went, into the black
Never to soothe my eternal sore eyes
It left me stranded, who w'd have seen
The end to our rendezvous, I c'd never
Foresee_ it had been pure intimacy of
A different kind; why then retire into
The dark night, why resign dear, w'out
A single sigh ! A shining star, my wont
Eternal companion of the forever sky?
Alas ! It flickered bright then died out.

The air is foggy,
And the sky is grey,
You can not see its blue today,
A suffocating silence fills this place,
And his empty seat's left a space,
So hollow and dim in my heart.

He sat right there next to the lamp,
But that place is cold and damp,
He left us in such a hurry,
Oh how much he made us worry!

I remember him really well,
Stories of fairies he would tell,
He'd tell us where the monsters dwell.
Generation by Generation told,
Stories with the worth of gold,
Stories containing young and old.

But now he's gone,
and I'm in grief,
Why must the world,
be such a thief?

.
          1
Sometimes the body is contagion
To the soul.  Stars in their mission fall
To seed the fertile flesh, ignite
Blue waters of sulfureous hearts,
And so the flash is set to cancel
In the flood.  

          2
Sometimes the lip of soul onto seal
Will not hold, before he first knocked
And let flesh enter, thorny pegs
Pricked nerve and pierced bone on his climb
To the rose, yea, some stars odd as
Meteors crash.

          3
In the swan-sea, song-sangy-frame of crib,
Rough hewn words bent mold to scrape, like
Blasted coral, stood half-submerged
Amid sea and sky, for between the leaves,
Behind the eye, there are little stars
Shining like existence.

          4
In a circle world he fashioned green
Blazons about the darkling day,
Fostered by celestial navigation,
Wrote a language for music, on a map of love
And charted the force of green in a wind-
Rose of discovery.

          5
Sometimes the soul is not contained, it
Bursts in silent sound like well water
From the source.  And of men in streets
He saw the pennies in their grumble
Eyes, and of love and its course he rubbed,
Tickling dim stars.

          6
It was his thirty ninth year in that fall
To heaven when the steeping cell,
Refused to push in its tide.  Homeless
And free on scaffold of bone the middling
Man retracted from sun to sink
With the moon, turn-tiding-toward sea
Like a changeling.

          7
And as ever, nor often, unwavering eyes
Sprout through shifting grains.  And as he spoke
Quite rimless, Dylan Thomas was petrified
In undying light, and solid set within a rill
Of reef sparkling in concert betwixt gas
And sea, so becoming in purple sleeves,
This constellation of mute singers all,
Dried five-fingered-fish, bright embryos
Returned to the shell, they burn between the leaves,
Beset the grounded skies and show sprite flashes
In the dark where He has left his imprints, burning
Above and plastered below.  The first rock stars!
.

Last Anthem
by Michael R. Burch

Where you have gone are the shadows falling...
does memory pale
like a fossil in shale
...do you not hear me calling?

Where you have gone do the shadows lengthen...
does memory wane
with the absence of pain
...is silence at last your anthem?

Keywords/Tags: elegy, eulogy, epitaph, death, grave, Sheol, shadows, silence, eternity, funeral, memory, memorial, tribute

here the sunshine patriot, bright and bleached –
they plucked the stars
to hang them from your chest. the rest are
gone, hidden by light pollution
and concrete skies.
your eyes reflect the blank face
of stopped clocks; steps from the car,
summer soldier.

but winter hides in
the cold metal of the trigger

a bang –
it echoes in fireworks, spatters the street with
blue white red red red.

the stutter of a gun,
or just a backfiring car?
sunshine man melts in a puddle of gaudy red,
the colour of sticky ice lollies
and patriotism.

here the newscaster, weeping tirelessly
for the camera.
“he was our country,” he says, and wasn’t he just?
back alleys and sunshine and
wanting to go back, wanting
to hide in the past.

and here the politicians, mourning loudly
into crisp white handkerchiefs. oh, how i wish we could
freeze time, draw grimaces in markers
on their painted faces
and watch them point fingers.
they use pretty words
heroic, or tragic
and pat their sweaty backs.

meanwhile,
sunshine man bleeds into the gutter
red white blue
the colour of freedom.

It is brutal
to have reached for
my trembling hand
and hold it

only to dust me off
back to my grave
without a goodbye
nor a burial

It is cruel
to have made me
believe I am one
with the livings

only to make my
second death
far more ******

O, tragedy indeed