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annh Jun 2021
π™±πšŽπš—πš, πš’πš—πšπšŽπš—πš
πš†πš’πšπš‘ πš‘πš˜πš˜πšπšŽπš πšœπšπš’πš•πš•πš—πšŽπšœπšœ,
π™·πš’πšœ πšπš’πš—πšπšŽπš›πšπš’πš™πšœ πšœπšπšŠπš’πš—πšŽπš πš‹πš•πšŠπšŒπš” πš‹πš’ πšπš’πšπš›πšŠπšπšŽπš πšπš’πš–πšŽ;

π™»πšŠπš™πšœπšŽπš πš‹πšŽπšπš πšŽπšŽπš— πš™πš•πšŠπšπšŽπšœ 𝚘𝚏 πšπš•πšŠπšœπšœ πšŠπš—πš πšŒπš˜πš™πš™πšŽπš›,
π™Όπš’πšœπšŽπš•πš πš πš’πšπš‘ πšœπš”πš’πš— 𝚘𝚏 πšŠπš•πš‹πšŠπš— πš–πšŠπš›πš‹πš•πšŽ,
π™±πš•πšžπšŽ πš’πš›πš’πšœπšŽπšœ πš‹πšžπš›πš—πš 𝚝𝚘 πšœπš–πš˜πš”πšŽ.

β€œI’m a student of light,” Louis said.
β€œAnd a poet.”
β€œNo, I leave that to Charles Baudelaire. My job is to capture things before they disappear.”
β€œAm I going to disappear, Monsieur Daguerre?”
- Dominic Smith, The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre
Michael R Burch Dec 2020
MICHELANGELO TRANSLATIONS

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564) was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet. He and his fellow Florentine, Leonardo da Vinci, were rivals for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man. Michelangelo is considered by many to be the greatest artist of all time.

Michelangelo Epigram Translations
loose translations/interpretations by Michael R. Burch

I saw the angel in the marble and freed him.
I hewed away the coarse walls imprisoning the lovely apparition.
Each stone contains a statue; it is the sculptor’s task to release it.
The danger is not aiming too high and missing, but aiming too low and hitting the mark.

AIM HIGH

The danger is not aiming too high and missing, but aiming too low and hitting the mark.β€”Michelangelo

If we shoot for the stars
to only end up on Mars,
that's still quite a trip.
The choice is ours.
β€”Michael R. Burch

Our greatness is only bounded by our horizons.
Be at peace, for God did not create us to abandon us.
God grant that I always desire more than my capabilities.
My soul’s staircase to heaven is earth’s loveliness.
I live and love by God’s peculiar light.
Trifles create perfection, yet perfection is no trifle.
Genius is infinitely patient, and infinitely painstaking.
I have never found salvation in nature; rather I love cities.
He who follows will never surpass.
Beauty is what lies beneath superfluities.
I criticize via creation, not by fault-finding.
If you knew how hard I worked, you wouldn’t call it β€œgenius.”

SONNET: RAVISHED
by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ravished, by all our eyes find fine and fair,
yet starved for virtues pure hearts might confess,
my soul can find no Jacobean stair
that leads to heaven, save earth's loveliness.
The stars above emit such rapturous light
our longing hearts ascend on beams of Love
and seek, indeed, Love at its utmost height.
But where on earth does Love suffice to move
a gentle heart, or ever leave it wise,
save for beauty itself and the starlight in her eyes?

SONNET: TO LUIGI DEL RICCIO, AFTER THE DEATH OF CECCHINO BRACCI
by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A pena prima.

I had barely seen the beauty of his eyes
Which unto yours were life itself, and light,
When he closed them fast in death's eternal night
To reopen them on God, in Paradise.

In my tardiness, I wept, too late made wise,
Yet the fault not mine: for death's disgusting ploy
Had robbed me of that deep, unfathomable joy
Which in your loving memory never dies.

Therefore, Luigi, since the task is mine
To make our unique friend smile on, in stone,
Forever brightening what dark earth would dim,
And because the Beloved causes love to shine,

And since the artist cannot work alone,
I must carve you, to tell the world of him!

BEAUTY AND THE ARTIST
by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Al cor di zolfo.

A heart aflame; alas, the flesh not so;
Bones brittle wood; the soul without a guide
To curb the will’s inferno; the crude pride
Of restless passions’ pulsing surge and flow;
A witless mind that – halt, lame, weak – must go
Blind through entrapments scattered far and wide; ...
Why wonder then, when one small spark applied
To such an assemblage, renders it aglow?

Add beauteous Art, which, Heaven-Promethean,
Must exceed nature – so divine a power
Belongs to those who strive with every nerve.
Created for such Art, from childhood given
As prey for her Infernos to devour,
I blame the Mistress I was born to serve.

SONNET XVI: LOVE AND ART
by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sì come nella penna.

Just as with pen and ink,
there is a high, a low, and an in-between style;
and, as marble yields its images pure and vile
to excite the fancies artificers might think;
even so, my lord, lodged deep within your heart
are mingled pride and mild humility;
but I draw only what I truly see
when I trust my eyes and otherwise stand apart.

Whoever sows the seeds of tears and sighs
(bright dews that fall from heaven, crystal-clear)
in various pools collects antiquities
and so must reap old griefs through misty eyes;
while the one who dwells on beauty, so painful here,
finds ephemeral hopes and certain miseries.

SONNET XXXI: LOVE'S LORDSHIP, TO TOMMASO DE' CAVALIERI
by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A che piΓΉ debb' io.

Am I to confess my heart's desire
with copious tears and windy words of grief,
when a merciless heaven offers no relief
to souls consumed by fire?
Why should my aching heart aspire
to life, when all must die? Beyond belief
would be a death delectable and brief,
since in my compound woes all joys expire!

Therefore, because I cannot dodge the blow,
I rather seek whoever rules my breast,
to glide between her gladness and my woe.
If only chains and bonds can make me blessed,
no marvel if alone and bare I go
to face the foe: her captive slave oppressed.

Keywords/Tags: Michelangelo, translation, translations, English, Italian, epigram, epigrams, art, artist, sculptor, angel, marble, stone, statute, genius, beauty, creation, mrbtran, mrbtrans
Aaron E Oct 2020
Paint myself a stone.
Equipped to roam aesthetic empire.

I walk the street,
Peeling up the corners of posters
for those who reach toward victory over death,
to see the stone beneath.

The pedestrians beside me sulk in rain
so eternally present,
it's pulsing collisions with the pavement
have drummed it's echoes into the soundtrack.

Engines stirring.
Rain pouring.
Walkers chattering.

Unnoticed erosion.

I watch the posters bleed.
A warning of their shared fate with the stone.
Canaries painted up with the brightest feathers.
Monuments like gleaming limestone pyramids.

But we won't remember the feathers as bright.

We'll remember the colors bled out, when they're bled out.
The paint on our pantheon will wash to white marble.
And they'll re-remember it as white marble.
They'll re-remember the lustrous white
limestone as dirt and sand,
when its dirt and sand.
Our history will be rewritten, as its remembered.
I haven't posted much, so I decided to put this up before I edited it all into rhyme. This is a small excerpt of a larger thread of thought I plan on continuing to write about.
Chris Saitta Jul 2020
The ancient way across this world lies like sunset over black pearls,
The treetops are marble-made that the riffler of wind deforms,
To know all mother tongues from the quarry of rough stones,
To speak everything at once, Bride of Unbecoming,
The moldering walls of lips, the kiss of vacant streets
And the quiet, wet solitude bespoken by back roads,
The whispered origami of the Forum, paper gods in folds,
Smothered in the false pillows of their own repose,
The wolf’s beard dipped in the fresh pant of dewfall,
While lovers have placed on the stones of the Appian Way
Their perfect hearts like votive candles, cupping the flames,
Looking down the swift arrow of loneliness, Sagittarius its same
Heaven-glow and besprinkled guidepost of a starlit Sacred Way.
Mother of Rome, your powdered face has been made ashen by those
Unreturned home, your far-off travels lead only to the graves of sons.
The ancient way across this world lies like sunset over black pearls.
Guntang May 2020
dusty veil
of moonlit shine
parading
on the vine
as marble floors
and crimson doors
dilute the sense
of time
Guntang May 2020
ballerinas of silk
dance between the footsteps
of the sullen past
as marble cranes
pick pleasant deeds
between the tip-toeing
of the future's feet
Maria Mitea May 2020
TheΒ underworld movement
makes me feel utterly incapable, and grown
feet condense into droplets of freezing blood, as I wait at Dostoevskaya station, where the intimidating marble has a soul of its own.

I Look
into the deep earth and I have eyes and I have depth, and I have speed, as I am earth moving through earth from all perspectives, apparently, I think and I know, but how do I reach there? at Prospect Mira,
I asked auntie Liudmila, while she was selling sunflowers at the Lyublinsko station, and I was running to catch up my breath beyond the boundaries in which has been conceived, while the worldly murals violate the norms andΒ Β β€œThe Idiot” reaches greatness on the Moscow walls silhouettes wrestling on a mortal terrain; his umbra, my umbra. Whose and which, and when? I simplify it down to the breath and keep running.
What a rush?

When the geometry ofΒ Β sombra
seems to have a life of its own on the underworld walls, above the surface arrogance takes shape believing that it is more intelligent than, I who can see the train coming. Uncertainty won’t bother impotence resting on earth’s shoulders, and Sleeping Giant can wait forever for the lost sailor.
What a blessing!

The blanket hugs Earth's chest, and steps move holding bouquets of sunflowers while gazing like a thief, whose big eyes are
rolling on the ground, β€œdon’t you see how steps flow with Parisian prudence, I am brave and happy on top of Your Eiffel.”  When?Β Β 
the eyes become wizards of clouds, and
β€œI”- Rest in wonder.
How Long?

I feel
the burn in my chest,
as the sunny dream chops its edges.
I run β€œhappy” warming up in β€œ La vita Γ¨ bella, ”
while the soles of my feet are burning
into the dark earth. Who cares? only
into the dark earth roots grow,
all lilac is still there at the Moscow Metro, while illusion succumbs to temptation running faster and
Harder,
the underworld has a life of its own,
a life of greater depth and purity, while
my eyes touch the cold striking murals, and
the book falls on the
Whisper

Not again,
I thought you settled the matter of
unattainable, while lilac was waiting, on my way, eating the cherry gem with
the spoon touching Earth's lips, and only
auntie Liudmila is content for selling every
sunflower that day her glowing eyes soothe in hypnotizing beauty at the Moscow Subway,
I let it be!
Dostoevskaya is a Moscow Subway station. The station walls contain murals/ illustrations of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, along with many other scenes (including illustrations of The Idiot). Prospect Mira (Peace) is a large open road, central to a big city.  "The book.." is all knowledge we humans created and possess, and that does not answer our big questions."Whisper" is the invisible reality; the essence, the mystic, the soul, the spirit, ...
Michael R Burch Mar 2020
Fountainhead
by Michael R. Burch

I did not delight in love so much
as in a kiss like linnets’ wings,
the flutterings of a pulse so soft
the heart remembers, as it sings:

to bathe there was its transport, brushed
by marble lips, or porcelain,β€”
one liquid kiss, one cool outburst
from pale rosettes. What did it mean ...

to float awhirl on minute tides
within the compass of your eyes,
to feel your alabaster bust
grow cold within? Ecstatic sighs

seem hisses now; your eyes, serene,
reflect the sun’s pale tourmaline.

Published by Romantics Quarterly, Poetica Victorian, PW Review, Nutty Stories (South Africa), Inspirational Stories, Poetry Life & Times

Keywords/Tags: Fountain, love, heart, pulse, bathe, kiss, sun, marble, bust, tides, sighs, eyes, sun, tourmaline
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