#holocaust
fingers hovering just above the buttons
finger prints of the whole of society
imprinted in minds and hearts
warmongers versus peacemakers.
May 2
May 2, 2026 at 8:16 AM UTC
a zap from out the blue
assured nuclear mutual destruction.
May 2
May 2, 2026 at 8:08 AM UTC
Another moving vessel,
this woman.
She's a delicate piece of machinery.
Everyone wants her
to be their corkscrew;
it's tangible madness.
And madness turns to glass,
and glass into brokenness.
A victim of occupied Europe,
the people she meets bring aneurysms
and constellations of war.
She loved to have a swim before bed,
treading water for rhythms
and under harvest moon,
sailing around troubled continents
where conflict might harbor.
The sea is bottomless,
breathing within it is an archetype,
until her nervous methods
turn submissive.
Tatuś used to talk of nobility,
and how its clandestine intentions
made for gentle waves.
Freedom might be a master illusion,
but she must swim mightily
towards it with each
collapsing breath.
Otherwise, she would surely drown
in the unforgiving arms
of the high seas.
Apr 20
Apr 20, 2026 at 7:03 AM UTC
Lublin was a major center of Jewish life, culture, and learning in Europe for centuries, with a community dating back to the 14th century. By 1939, approximately 45,000 Jews lived in the city, comprising over one-third of the population. However, this vibrant community was almost entirely destroyed during the Holocaust, with most residents killed in the Belzec camp,
the Majdanek camp, or on-site
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APRIL 14th
Holocaust Day
😟😕🙁☹️
little emojis,
are not a cute conveyor
of my sad~itude this year,
when the prevailing winds
give fresh energy to
old hatred’s, new youthful adherents,
and the never forget! promise taken
is just now a swear word,
in reverse,
like fk the fking the jews,
and now armed guards
in front of every synagogue and temple,
nowadays
which brings back memories
of a trip to Paris
in ‘82
where /when the violence in Le Marais District,
Rue de Rosier
just missed us
for we always lunch late in Europe,
comme il faut
and we missed it by minutes
then of course,
then thereafter
the machine gun carrying gendarmes,
in front of every jewish institution,
then till today,
the occasional ******** on an a bus stop shelter,
there then,
now here,
on NYC. lampposts,
and thus memories
formed
framed
&
finalized inscribed
now there are
armed guards outside
our grandchildren’s school,
in New York City,
and thus
their memories are
forming,
but not yet
finalized,
though the genes
newly refreshed,
have never forgotten
and will
never forget
as their memories
are additive
to their ancestors
from
Poland,
and Germany
and France
——-
For the first time in 40 years, national homage was paid on Tuesday, August 9 to the victims of the anti-Semitic terrorist attack, which took place on August 9, 1982, killing six (INCLUDING TWO AMERICAN ON OUR TOUR) and injuring 22. The ceremony was held at the intersection of rue des Rosiers and rue Ferdinand-Duvalin, the heart of the Jewish district of Le Marais, in the 4th arrondissement in Paris.
———-
Apr 15
Apr 15, 2026 at 11:00 AM UTC
The girl who met God
said he had blue eyes
and spoke German.
He stood tall,
not in heaven,
but on earth
at a crossing of dust and fear.
Playing God,
he raised his hand
like a prophet of steel
and divided the living:
You, to the right.
You, to the left.
She laughed,
not because it was funny,
but because she was still a girl.
**** she called him
innocence flirting with death.
He did not smile.
He pointed again:
You, to the right.
Your mother, left.
Your sister, left.
That was the last time
love stood in one place.
The world would later cryed:
Holocaust.
Never again.
Candles were lit
a Menorah against the dark,
flames trembling with memory.
But the light,
too bright,
burned the eyes
and blinded the hearts.
And history,
faith dressed as righteousness,
returned with the same hands
that once lit the flame.
So tell me:
when she said
she met God,
did she mean
the man with blue eyes?
Or the silence
that followed him?
Apr 2
Apr 2, 2026 at 5:51 AM UTC
I was once human,
Not a number but a name
I was once human,
Now a number, not a name,
I was once human
Had a name, now a number.
I was human,
Never will be the same
I was human
Given the right to blame
I am human
Am both the number and the name.
Mar 13
Mar 13, 2026 at 10:56 AM UTC
the gate is a throat
an ironic warning
it swallowed the living
and spat out their mourning
it left behind the leather shells—
the shoes that walked their final mile
a mountain made of hollow things
the ghost of every stolen smile
the evil geometry of parallel lines
the tracks like teeth in the frozen ground
sleepers didn’t lead to dreams
they simply fed the fiery mound
the birds can sense implosion here
the grass still holds the morning dew
the world bore witness but looked away
the sky saw all, but remained blue.
Feb 1
Feb 1, 2026 at 5:49 PM UTC
and the dry bones cry out
from folds of skin,
once coated with the ash
of someone else’s sin,
to the tune of ‘Jewish Town’
haunting the barrel of a violin.
Strings pulled taut,
the way fathers stood tall,
tightly wound as peyot,
each clothed in prayer shawl,
petitioning Adonai
before the Officer’s call
to cut simanim from self,
uniform against the wall.
Bow dancing
the way Eva danced for Mengele,
sharp as a knife edge,
to chase the horror away,
to sing Rachel’s tears,
to tell stories
that no words can say.
Notes linger like a mother’s love,
trembling beneath coats
as hidden infants,
or else as fear in throats
caught tight, ensnared,
shamed and blamed
six million scape goats
bleating from the ashes -
precious ones reduced to motes.
The melody is moving
higher than time and space,
beyond human understanding,
rhythm of divine grace,
to the tune of eternal calling,
and shining light of the Lord’s face.
Jan 28
Jan 28, 2026 at 6:02 PM UTC
Shattered glass returns to quartz and coral
Human cries caught up in gusts, settle on dunes
Iron rich and red
Those aren't mothers holding children
They were
Now bits and bytes for consumption
So long as the horror ends in under 90 seconds
This is how we doom scroll
Secondhand suffering
Visual colonists
Unwilling donors
Thank God you're here
It's time to cleanse your feed
Dec 25, 2025
Dec 25, 2025 at 8:46 PM UTC
The sky split open
and no god fell through.
Only silence.
The kind that presses on your chest,
like a boot,
and dares you to breath.
I wasn't there—
not when the ash fell like snowfall over rooftops
or when laughter cracked beneath the boots of men
who'd long buried their humanity
beneath orders and uniform
that reeked of rot.
But sometimes I swear, my soul
flinches like it was.
They say time is linear.
But what of this ache
that folds my teenage heart
into the pages of a burning diary
tucked beneath floorboards in Warsaw?
Why do I weep for a dog limping in the present
and somehow feel the shadow
of a boy limping through barbed wire,
hollow-eyed, hands empty?
Somewhere between the hush of a prayer
and the wail of a train whistle,
they vanished— leaving only their ghosts,
to sit beside me on bus rides,
as I pretend the cold air
is the reason my eyes sting.
She calls me a mistake.
The world calls me too sensitive.
But they don't see the wars I fight—
inside quiet moments.
How I want to hand lanterns to the lost,
wrap bandages around the broken,
even if they're shadows from 1942.
This is not poetry.
This is a eulogy I've been writing
since I first saw a black-and-white film
and something ancient in me wept
for strangers whose faces I somehow knew.
No, I wasn't there.
But maybe my soul was.
And maybe,
just maybe,
it's still trying to get someone home.
Dec 11, 2025
Dec 11, 2025 at 4:50 AM UTC
Michael R. Burch is one of the world's most-published poets, with over 11,500 publications (not including self-published poems). Mike Burch is an American poet, editor and translator who lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Burch is also a longtime editor, publisher and translator of Jewish Holocaust poetry and poems about the Trail of Tears, Hiroshima, Ukraine, the Nakba and school shootings.
Epitaph for a Child of the Holocaust
by Michael R. Burch
I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.
These are my best poems, according to Google. I let Google pick my best poems with the search:
The best poems of Michael R. Burch
The search returns 24 poems but by repeating the search a few times, I managed to come up with 35 poems...
Will There Be Starlight (#1)
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
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?
I Pray Tonight (#2)
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.
The Harvest of Roses (#3)
by Michael R. Burch
I have not come for the harvest of roses—
the poets' mad visions,
their railing at rhyme ...
for I have discerned what their writing discloses:
weak words wanting meaning,
beat torsioning time.
Nor have I come for the reaping of gossamer—
images weak,
too forced not to fail;
gathered by poets who worship their luster,
they shimmer, impendent,
resplendently pale.
Because Her Heart Is Tender (#4)
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
She scrawled soft words in soap: "Never Forget,"
Dove-white on her car's window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her. As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.
She wrote in sidewalk chalk: "Never Forget,"
and kept her heart's own counsel. No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.
Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers' glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on,
she stitches in wet linen: "NEVER FORGET,"
and listens to her heart's emphatic song.
The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond ...
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.
She writes in adamant: "NEVER FORGET"
because her heart is tender with regret.
Caveat Spender (#5)
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.
Free Fall (#6)
by Michael R. Burch
These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel
where suns revolve around an axle star ...
Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours.
Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel.
Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell?
To see is not to know, but you can feel
the tug sometimes—the gravity, the shell
as lustrous as damp pearl. You sink, you reel
toward some draining revelation. Air—
too thin to grasp, to breathe. Such pressure. Gasp.
The stars invert, electric, everywhere.
And so we fall, down-tumbling through night’s fissure ...
two beings pale, intent to fall forever
around each other—fumbling at love’s tether ...
now separate, now distant, now together.
In Praise of Meter (#7)
by Michael R. Burch
The earth is full of rhythms so precise
the octave of the crystal can produce
a trillion oscillations, yet not lose
a second's beat. The ear needs no device
to hear the unsprung rhythms of the couch
drown out the mouth's; the lips can be debauched
by kisses, should the heart put back its watch
and find the pulse of love, and sing, devout.
If moons and tides in interlocking dance
obey their numbers, what's been left to chance?
Should poets be more lax—their circumstance
as humble as it is?—or readers wince
to see their ragged numbers thin, to hear
the moans of drones drown out the Chanticleer?
Moments (#8)
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
There were moments full of promise,
like the petal-scented rainfall of early spring,
when to hold you in my arms and to kiss your willing lips
seemed everything.
There are moments strangely empty
full of pale unearthly twilight—how the cold stars stare!—
when to be without you is a dark enchantment
the night and I share.
Let Me Give Her Diamonds (#9)
for Beth
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.
Step Into Starlight (#10)
by Michael R. Burch
Step into starlight,
lovely and wild,
lonely and longing,
a woman, a child . . .
Throw back drawn curtains,
enter the night,
dream of his kiss
as a comet ignites . . .
Then fall to your knees
in a wind-fumbled cloud
and shudder to hear
oak hocks groaning aloud.
Flee down the dark path
to where the snaking vine bends
and withers and writhes
as winter descends . . .
And learn that each season
ends one vanished day,
that each pregnant moon holds
no spent tides in its sway . . .
For, as suns seek horizons—
boys fall, men decline.
As the grape sags with its burden,
remember—the wine!
Wulf and Eadwacer (#11)
(Anonymous, circa 960-990 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.
We are so different.
Wulf's on one island; I'm on another.
His island's a fortress, fastened by fens.
Here bloodthirsty men howl for carnage.
They'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack.
We are so different.
My thoughts pursued Wulf like panting hounds.
Whenever it rained and I wept,
big, battle-strong arms embraced me.
It felt good, to a point, but the end was loathsome.
Wulf, oh, my Wulf! My desire for you
has made me sick; your seldom-comings
have left me famished, deprived of real meat.
Do you hear, Heaven-Watcher? A wolf has borne
our wretched whelp to the woods.
One can easily sever what never was one:
our song together.
A Surfeit of Light (#12)
by Michael R. Burch
There was always a surfeit of light in your presence.
You stood distinctly apart, not of the humdrum world—
a chariot of gold in a procession of plywood.
We were all pioneers of the modern expedient race,
raising the ante: Home Depot to Lowe’s.
Yours was an antique grace—Thrace’s or Mesopotamia’s.
We were never quite sure of your silver allure,
of your trillium-and-platinum diadem,
of your utter lack of flatware-like utility.
You told us that night—your wound would not scar.
The black moment passed, then you were no more.
The darker the sky, how much brighter the Star!
The day of your funeral, I ripped out the crown mold.
You were this fool’s gold.
Abide (#13)
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).
Autumn Conundrum (#14)
by Michael R. Burch
It's not that every leaf must finally fall,
it's just that we can never catch them all.
Breakings (#15)
by Michael R. Burch
I did it out of pity.
I did it out of love.
I did it not to break the heart of a tender, wounded dove.
But gods without compassion
ordained: Frail things must break!
Now what can I do for her shattered psyche’s sake?
I did it not to push.
I did it not to shove.
I did it to assist the flight of indiscriminate Love.
But gods, all mad as hatters,
who legislate such great matters,
ordained that everything irreplaceable shatters.
don’t forget (#16)
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.
Enigma (#17)
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
O, terrible angel,
bright lover and avenger,
full of whimsical light and vile anger;
wild stranger,
seeking the solace of night, or the danger;
pale foreigner,
alien to man, or savior.
Who are you,
seeking consolation and passion
in the same breath,
screaming for pleasure, bereft
of all articles of faith,
finding life
harsher than death?
Grieving angel,
giving more than taking,
how lucky the man
who has found in your love, this—our reclamation;
fallen wren,
you must strive to fly though your heart is shaken;
weary pilgrim,
you must not give up though your feet are aching;
lonely child,
lie here still in my arms; you must soon be waking.
Epitaph for a Palestinian Child (#18)
by Michael R. Burch
I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.
Fahr an' Ice (#19)
by Michael R. Burch
From what I know of death, I'll side with those
who'd like to have a say in how it goes:
just make mine cool, cool rocks (twice drowned in likker),
and real fahr off, instead of quicker.
For All That I Remembered (#20)
by Michael R. Burch
For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...
and yet I hold her close within my thought.
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the apricot
clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed
so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.
The memory of her gathers like a flood
and bears me to that night, that only night,
when she and I were one, and if I could ...
I'd reach to her this time and, smiling, brush
the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact
each feature, each impression. Love is such
a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone
before we recognize it. I would crush
my lips to hers to hold their memory,
if not more tightly, less elusively.
in-flight convergence (#21)
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.
In the Whispering Night (#22)
by Michael R. Burch
for George King
In the whispering night, when the stars bend low
till the hills ignite to a shining flame,
when a shower of meteors streaks the sky
as the lilies sigh in their beds, for shame,
we must steal our souls, as they once were stolen,
and gather our vigor, and all our intent.
We must heave our husks into some savage ocean
and laugh as they shatter, and never repent.
We must dance in the darkness as stars dance before us,
soar, Soar! through the night on a butterfly's breeze ...
blown high, upward-yearning, twin spirits returning
to the heights of awareness from which we were seized.
In this Ordinary Swoon (#23)
by Michael R. Burch
In this ordinary swoon
as I pass from life to death,
I feel no heat from the cold, pale moon;
I feel no sympathy for breath.
Who I am and why I came,
I do not know; nor does it matter.
The end of every man’s the same
and every god’s as mad as a hatter.
I do not fear the letting go;
I only fear the clinging on
to hope when there’s no hope, although
I lift my face to the blazing sun
and feel the greater intensity
of the wilder inferno within me.
Leaf Fall (#24)
by Michael R. Burch
Whatever winds encountered soon resolved
to swirling fragments, till chaotic heaps
of leaves lay pulsing by the backyard wall.
In lieu of rakes, our fingers sorted each
dry leaf into its place and built a high,
soft bastion against earth's gravitron—
a patchwork quilt, a trampoline, a bright
impediment to fling ourselves upon.
And nothing in our laughter as we fell
into those leaves was like the autumn's cry
of also falling. Nothing meant to die
could be so bright as we, so colorful—
clad in our plaids, oblivious to pain
we'd feel today, should we leaf-fall again.
Once (#25)
for Beth
Once when her kisses were fire incarnate
and left in their imprint bright lipstick, and flame,
when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes,
leaving me listlessly sighing her name . . .
Once when her ******* were as pale, as beguiling,
as wan rivers of sand shedding heat like a mist,
when her words would at times softly, mildly rebuke me
all the while as her lips did more wildly insist . . .
Once when the thought of her echoed and whispered
through vast wastelands of need like a Bedouin chant,
I ached for the touch of her lips with such longing
that I vowed all my former vows to recant . . .
Once, only once, something bloomed, of a desiccate seed—
this implausible blossom her wild rains of kisses decreed.
Ordinary Love (#26)
by Michael R. Burch
Indescribable—our love—and still we say
with eyes averted, turning out the light,
"I love you," in the ordinary way
and tug the coverlet where once we lay,
all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white ...
indescribably in love. Or so we say.
Your hair's blonde thicket now is tangle-gray;
you turn your back; you murmur to the night,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.
Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray
to warm ourselves. We do not touch despite
a love so indescribable. We say
we're older now, that "love" has had its day.
But that which Love once countenanced, delight,
still makes you indescribable. I say,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.
Piercing the Shell (#27)
by Michael R. Burch
If we strip away all the accouterments of war,
perhaps we'll discover what the heart is for.
Sweet Rose of Virtue (#28)
by William Dunbar
loose translation/interpretation 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 men hold most dear―
except only that you are merciless.
Into your garden, today, I followed you;
there I found flowers of freshest hue,
both white and red, delightful to see,
and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently―
yet nowhere one leaf nor petal of rue.
I fear that March with his last arctic blast
has slain my fair flower and left her downcast;
whose piteous death does my heart such pain
that I long to plant love's root again―
so comforting her bowering leaves have been.
The Divide (#29)
by Michael R. Burch
The sea was not salt the first tide ...
was man born to sorrow that first day
with the moon—a pale beacon across the Divide,
the brighter for longing, an object denied—
the tug at his heart's pink, bourgeoning clay?
The sea was not salt the first tide ...
but grew bitter, bitter—man's torrents supplied.
The bride of their longing—forever astray,
her shield a cold beacon across the Divide,
flashing pale signals: Decide. Decide.
Choose me, or His Brightness, I will not stay.
The sea was not salt the first tide ...
imploring her, ebbing: Abide, abide.
The silver fish flash there, the manatees gray.
The moon, a pale beacon across the Divide,
has taught us to seek Love's concealed side:
the dark face of longing, the poets say.
The sea was not salt the first tide ...
the moon a pale beacon across the Divide.
The Folly of Wisdom (#30)
by Michael R. Burch
She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and takes my hand.
We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go,
so I smile, and I follow ...
And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves
that flutter above us, and what she believes—
I can almost remember—goes something like this:
the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss.
She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well
if only we find him! The woodpecker’s knell
as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree
that once was a fortress to someone like me
rings wildly above us. Some things that we know
we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow.
The Peripheries of Love (#31)
by Michael R. Burch
Through waning afternoons we glide
the watery peripheries of love.
A silence, a quietude falls.
Above us—the sagging pavilions of clouds.
Below us—rough pebbles slowly worn smooth
grate in the gentle turbulence
of yesterday’s forgotten rains.
Later, the moon like a ******
lifts her stricken white face
and the waters rise
toward some unfathomable shore.
We sway gently in the wake
of what stirs beneath us,
yet leaves us unmoved ...
curiously motionless,
as though twilight might blur
the effects of proximity and distance,
as though love might be near—
as near
as a single cupped tear of resilient dew
or a long-awaited face.
The Shrinking Season (#32)
by Michael R. Burch
With every wearying year
the weight of the winter grows
and while the schoolgirl outgrows
her clothes,
the widow disappears
in hers.
Be that Rock (#33)
by Michael R. Burch
for George Edwin Hurt Sr.
When I was a child
I never considered man’s impermanence,
for you were a mountain of adamant stone:
a man steadfast, immense,
and your words rang.
And when you were gone,
I still heard your voice, which never betrayed,
"Be strong and of a good courage,
neither be afraid ..."
as the angels sang.
And, O!, I believed
for your words were my truth, and I tried to be brave
though the years slipped away
with so little to save
of that talk.
Now I'm a man—
a man ... and yet Grandpa ... I'm still the same child
who sat at your feet
and learned as you smiled.
Be that rock.
Crescendo Against Heaven (#34)
by Michael R. Burch
As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until it sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love’s tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.
These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.
Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermilion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire ...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.
God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem’s retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man’s beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good ...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.
Desdemona (#35)
by Michael R. Burch
Though you possessed the moon and stars,
you are bound to fate and wed to chance.
Your lips deny they crave a kiss;
your feet deny they ache to dance.
Your heart imagines wild romance.
Though you cupped fire in your hands
and molded incandescent forms,
you are barren now, and—spent of flame—
the ashes that remain are borne
toward the sun upon a storm.
You, who demanded more, have less,
your heart within its cells of sighs
held fast by chains of misery,
confined till death for peddling lies—
imprisonment your sense denies.
You, who collected hearts like leaves
and pressed each once within your book,
forgot. None—winsome, bright or rare—
not one was worth a second look.
My heart, as others, you forsook.
But I, though I loved you from afar
through silent dawns, and gathered rue
from gardens where your footsteps left
cold paths among the asters, knew—
each moonless night the nettles grew
and strangled hope, where love dies too.
These are my personal picks of poems not selected by Google ...
Sunset
by Michael R. Burch
This poem is dedicated to my grandfather, George Edwin Hurt, who died April 4, 1998.
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.
Fascination with Light
by Michael R. Burch
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
then flutters and drifts on in dark aimless flight.
And yet it returns
to the flame, its delight,
as long as it burns.
There's a longer version of "Fascination with Light" which adds the following stanza:
And still it returns on incessant wings—
ruthless grey monarch of the night air.
It flutters and stares with huge primitive eyes,
and it sees beyond ruinous nights
to all the loveliness inherent there;
and it sings all the hideous despair
of its unworthiness, in a frenzy of wings;
and its desolate womb holds incurled in silk
the husks of dread kings and pale lovers.
I began writing poetry around age eleven, mostly for personal amusement at first, then started to write with larger goals in mind around age thirteen or fourteen (I was very ambitious). This is one of my earliest poems, written in my teens ...
Styx
by Michael R. Burch
Black waters,
deep and dark and still . . .
all men have passed this way,
or will.
This is another early poem, written as a teenager, that made me feel like a "real poet" ...
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 heart 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 is another early poem, and my first poem that didn't rhyme...
Something
by Michael R. Burch
―for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba
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 has swept into a corner ... where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.
This is a very early poem of mine. I believe I wrote the first version around age 14 or 15 ...
Leave Taking
by Michael R. Burch
Brilliant leaves abandon battered limbs
to waltz upon ecstatic winds
until they die.
But the barren and embittered trees,
lament the frolic of the leaves
and curse the bleak November sky ...
Now, as I watch the leaves' high flight
before the fading autumn light,
I think that, perhaps, at last I may
have learned what it means to say—
goodbye.
This is another early poem of mine, written at age eighteen. It has been set to music by the award-winning New Zealand composer David Hamilton.
Midnight Lullaby
by Michael R. Burch
I.
A measureless rhythm rules the night—
few have heard it,
but I have shared it,
and its secret is mine.
To put it into words
is as to extract the sweetness from honey
and must be done as gently
as a butterfly cleans its wings.
But when it is captured, it is gone again;
its usefulness is only
that it lulls to sleep.
II.
So sleep, my love, to the cadence of night,
to the moans of the moonlit hills'
bass chorus of frogs, while the deep valleys fill
with the nightjar’s shrill, cryptic trills.
But I will not sleep this night, nor any …
how can I—when my dreams
are always of your perfect face
ringed by soft whorls of fretted lace,
framed by your tear-drenched pillowcase?
First They Came for the Muslims
by Michael R. Burch
after Martin Niemöller
First they came for the Muslims
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Muslim.
Then they came for the homosexuals
and I did not speak out
because I was not a homosexual.
Then they came for the feminists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a feminist.
Now when will they come for me
because I was too busy and too apathetic
to defend my sisters and brothers?
"First They Came for the Muslims" has been adopted by Amnesty International for its Words That Burn anthology, a free online resource for students and educators. According to Google the poem has appeared on a staggering 691,000 web pages. That's a lot of cutting and pasting! It is indeed an honor to have one of my poems published by such an outstanding organization as Amnesty International, one of the world's finest. Not only is the cause good―a stated goal is to teach students about human rights through poetry―but so far the poetry published seems quite good to me. My poem appears beneath the famous Holocaust poem that inspired it, "First They Came" by Martin Niemöller. Here's a bit of background information: Words That Burn is an online poetry anthology and human rights educational resource for students and teachers created by Amnesty International in partnership with The Poetry Hour. Amnesty International is the world’s largest human rights organization, with seven million supporters. Its new webpage has been designed to "enable young people to explore human rights through poetry whilst developing their voice and skills as poets." This exemplary resource was inspired by the poetry anthology Words that Burn, curated by Josephine Hart of The Poetry Hour, which in turn was inspired by Thomas Gray's observation that "Poetry is thoughts that breathe and words that burn."
Alas, Sir Munchalot!
by Michael R. Burch
You ate too much,
your common lot;
you munched too much,
so now you’ve got
a gut.
Keywords/Tags: best, poems, best poems, most popular poems, Burch, Michael R. Burch
Jun 16, 2023
Jun 16, 2023 at 9:40 PM UTC
Hidden away
in this basement
wanted for who I am
hated for who I'm not
war rages outside
fear paces inside
people are dying
caged and starved
I crawl into a book
sail the oceans
fight pirates
fall in love
Sep 22, 2024
Sep 22, 2024 at 1:04 AM UTC
We are left speechless by man's inhumanity to man. These are poems about the Holocaust, Gaza, Hiroshima, 9-11, war, and other forms of human violence...
Speechless
by Ko Un
translation by Michael R. Burch
At Auschwitz
piles of glasses
mountains of shoes
returning, we stared out different windows.
“Speechless” is my translation of a Holocaust poem by Ko Un that has also been published as “Speechless at Auschwitz.”
Ko Un was speechless at Auschwitz.
Someday, when it’s too late,
will we be speechless at Gaza?
―Michael R. Burch
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?”
Published by Setu (India), Borderless Journal (Singapore), European Tribune, Archive Today, TV-India, Alois and The HyperTexts
Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch
for the mothers of Gaza
There was, in your touch, such tenderness—as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable to sing.
What songs long forgotten occur to you now—
a babe at each breast? What terrible vow
ripped from your throat like the thunder that day
can never hold severing lightnings at bay?
Time taught you tenderness—time, oh, and love.
But love in the end is seldom enough ...
and time?—insufficient to life’s brief task.
I can only admire, unable to ask—
what is the source, whence comes the desire
of a woman to love as no God may require?
Published by Borderless Journal (Singapore) and SindhuNews (India)
War, the God
by Michael R. Burch
War lifts His massive head and turns …
(The world upon its axis spins.)
… His head held low from weight of horns,
His hackles high. The sun He scorns
and seeks the rose not, but its thorns.
The sun must set, as night begins,
while, unrepentant of our sins,
we play His game, until He wins.
For War, our God, our bellicose Mars
still dominates our heavens, determines our Stars.
Pfennig Postcard, Wrong Address
by Michael R. Burch
We saw their pictures:
tortured out of Our imaginations
like golems.
We could not believe
in their frail extremities
or their gaunt faces,
pallid as Our disbelief.
they are not
with us now;
We have:
huddled them
into the backroomsofconscience,
consigned them
to the ovensofsilence,
buried them in the mass graves
of circumstancesbeyondourcontrol.
We have
so little left
of them,
now,
to remind US...
Originally published in the Holocaust anthology Blood to Remember where it appears at the Library of Congress.
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, Warosu (Japan), Pela Poesia (Portugal), Borderless Journal (Singapore), ArtVilla, Poetry Life & Times, Let Justice Roll and Study.com
Mending
by Michael R. Burch
for the survivors of 9-11 and their families
I am besieged with kindnesses;
sometimes I laugh,
delighted for a moment,
then resume
the more seemly occupation of my craft.
I do not taste the candies ...
the perfume
of roses is uplifted
in a draft
that vanishes into the ceiling’s fans
which spin like old propellers
till the room
is full of ghostly bits of yarn . . .
My task
is not to knit,
but not to end too soon.
Published by Poetry SuperHighway and Poetry Life & Times
Because Her Heart Is Tender
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth, on the first anniversary of 9-11
She scrawled soft words in soap: “Never Forget,”
Dove-white on her car’s window, and the wren,
because her heart is tender, might regret
it called the sun to wake her.
As I slept,
she heard lost names recounted, one by one.
She wrote in sidewalk chalk: “Never Forget,”
and kept her heart’s own counsel.
No rain swept
away those words, no tear leaves them undone.
Because her heart is tender with regret,
bruised by razed towers’ glass and steel and stone
that shatter on and on and on and on ...
she stitches in damp linen: “NEVER FORGET,”
and listens to her heart’s emphatic song.
The wren might tilt its head and sing along
because its heart once understood regret
when fledglings fell beyond, beyond, beyond
its reach, and still the boot-heeled world strode on.
She writes in adamant: “NEVER FORGET”
because her heart is tender with regret.
Published by Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Villanelle, The Villanelle Blogspot, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Nietzsche Twilight, Nutty Stories (South Africa), Poetry Renewal Magazine, Live Journal, Famous Poets and Poems, Inspirational Stories and Other Voices International; also the winner of a Poetry Nook contest
Defenses
by Michael R. Burch
Beyond the silhouettes of trees
stark, naked and defenseless
there stand long rows of sentinels:
these pert white picket fences.
Now whom they guard and how they guard,
the good Lord only knows;
but savages would have to laugh
observing the tidy rows.
Nothing Returns
by Michael R. Burch
A wave implodes,
impaled upon
impassive rocks...
this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear...
you are leaving
and the ungrieving
winds demur...
telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before,
here where you have left no mark
upon this dark
Heraclitean shore.
Laughter’s Cry
by Michael R. Burch
Because life is a mystery, we laugh
and do not know the half.
Because death is a mystery, we cry
when one is gone, our numbering thrown awry.
Listen
by Michael R. Burch writing as Immanuel A. Michael
Listen to me now and heed my voice;
I am a madman, alone, screaming in the wilderness,
but listen now.
Listen to me now, and if I say
that black is black, and white is white, and in between lies gray,
I have no choice.
Does a madman choose his words? They come to him,
the moon’s illuminations, intimations of the wind,
and he must speak.
But listen to me now, and if you hear
the tolling of the judgment bell, and if its tone is clear,
then do not tarry,
but listen, or cut off your ears, for I Am weary.
Published by Penny Dreadful, Formal Verse, The HyperTexts, Various Heresies, the Anthologise Committee and Nonsuch High School for Girls (Surrey, England)
Saving Graces
by Michael R. Burch
for the Religious Right
Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter
(wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter).
Published by Shot Glass Journal and Poem Today
Am I really this old,
so many ghosts
beckoning?
—Michael R. Burch
Mother, I’ve made a terrible mess of things ...
Is there grace in the world, as the nightingale sings?
—Michael R. Burch
Shattered
by Vera Pavlova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I shattered your heart;
now I limp through the shards
barefoot.
Published by Poem Today, Brief Poems, Bauhaus Modernists, Rose in the Dark, Milam’s Musings, Twin Flame, BeatPort, Dark South, Wisdom Trove, My Gloomy Monster, University of Pennsylvania
To Have Loved
by Michael R. Burch
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?
Published by The Raintown Review, Triplopia, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), The Chained Muse, Borderless Journal, The Pennsylvania Review, and in a YouTube recital by David B. Gosselin
Poppy
by Michael R. Burch
“It is lonely to be born.” – Dannie Abse,“The Second Coming”
It is lonely to be born
between the intimate ears of corn...
the sunlit, flooded, shellshocked rows.
The scarecrow flutters, listens, knows...
Pale butterflies in staggering flight
ascend the gauntlet winds and light
before the scything harvester.
The winsome buds of cornflowers
prepare themselves to be airborne,
and it is lonely to be shorn,
decapitate, of eager life
so early in love’s blinding maze
of silks and tassels, goldened days
when life’s renewed, gone underground.
Sad confidante of worm and mound,
how little stands to be regained
of what is left.
A tiny cleft
now marks your birth, your reddening
among the amber waves. O, sing!
Another waits to be reborn
among bent thistle, down and thorn.
A hoofprint’s cleft, a ram’s curved horn
curled inward, turned against the heart,
a spoor like infamy. Depart.
You came too late, the signs are clear:
whose world this is, now watches, near.
There is no ****** for the heart.
Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)
The Lingering and the Unconsoled Heart
by Michael R. Burch
There is a silence—
the last unspoken moment
before death,
when the moon,
cratered and broken,
is all madness and light,
when the breath comes low and complaining,
and the heart is a ruin
of emptiness and night.
There is a grief—
the grief of a lover's embrace
while faith still shimmers in a mother’s tears ...
There is no dismaler time, nor place,
while the faint glimmer of life is ours
that the lingering and the unconsoled heart fears
beyond this: seeing its own stricken face
in eyes that drift toward some incomprehensible place.
Sometimes the Dead
by Michael R. Burch
Sometimes we catch them out of the corners of our eyes—
the pale dead.
After they have fled
the gourds of their bodies, like escaping fragrances they rise.
Once they have become a cloud’s mist, sometimes like the rain
they descend;
they appear, sometimes silver like laughter,
to gladden the hearts of men.
Sometimes like a pale gray fog, they drift
unencumbered, yet lumbrously,
as if over the sea
there was the lightest vapor even Atlas could not lift.
Sometimes they haunt our dreams like forgotten melodies
only half-remembered.
Though they lie dismembered
in black catacombs, sepulchers and dismal graves; although they have committed felonies,
yet they are us. Someday soon we will meet them in the graveyard dust
blood-engorged, but never sated
since Cain slew Abel.
But until we become them, let us steadfastly forget them, even as we know our children must ...
grave request
by michael r. burch
come to ur doom
in Tombstone;
the stars stark and chill
over Boot Hill
care nothing for ur desire;
still,
imagine they wish u no ill,
that u burn with the same antique fire;
for there’s nothing to life but the thrill
of living until u expire;
so come, spend ur last hardearned bill
on Tombstone.
stones
by michael r. burch
circa age 16
i.
far below me lies a village
with its houses hewn from stone
and though Everyman who lives there
bravely claims he’s not alone,
i can tell him, yes u are!
for u cannot touch the stars
no matter how u try;
nor can u tame the mountain,
nor appease the darkening sky.
ii.
and late at night
their flinty fires blazing cannot warm their stony hearts;
though the villagers “believe” (in what?)
the terror-fear departs
them only at mid-day
for they fear what Others say
when their walls have shut them in.
iii.
and do they sin?
who am i to say?
most stones are shades of gray;
what does it matter, anyway?
iv.
oh, i think that living is not easy
and that dying is not hard ...
as the stars above wink, meaningless,
so they are;
so we all are.
v.
a legion without sound
in dusky darkness drawing down
to settle on the town,
the Night is like a stone —
hard and dark and rolling on,
hard and dark and rolling on.
Less Heroic Couplets: Liquidity Crisis
by Michael R. Burch
And so I have loved you, and so I have lost,
accrued disappointment, ledgered its cost,
debited wisdom, credited pain . . .
My assets remaining are liquid again.
Published by ***** of Parnassus and Borderless Journal (Singapore); originally titled “Accounting”
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.
Published by ByLine, Mandrake Poetry Review, Bewildering Stories, E Mobius Pi, Underground Poets, Little Brown Poetry, Triplopia, Neovictorian/Cochlea, Muse Apprentice Guild, Poetry on Demand, Poet’s Haven, Famous Poets and Poems, and others
Daredevil
by Michael R. Burch
There are days that I believe
(and nights that I deny)
love is not mutilation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There are tightropes leaps bereave—
taut wires strumming high
brief songs, infatuations
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were cannon shots’ soirees,
hearts barricaded, wise . . .
and then . . . annihilation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were nights our hearts conceived
dawns’ indiscriminate sighs.
To dream was our consolation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were acrobatic leaves
that tumbled down to lie
at our feet, bright trepidations.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
There were hearts carved into trees—
tall stakes where you and I
left childhood’s salt libations . . .
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
Where once you scraped your knees;
love later bruised your thighs.
Death numbs all, our sedation.
Daredevil, dry your eyes.
Each Color a Scar
by Michael R. Burch
What she left here,
upon my cheek,
is a tear.
She did not speak,
but her intention
was clear,
and I was meek,
far too meek, and, I fear,
too sincere.
What she can never take
from my heart
is its ache;
for now we, apart,
are like leaves
without weight,
scattered afar
by love, or by hate,
each color a scar.
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’d 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
by yielding all my virtue to her grace.
Originally published by Romantics Quarterly as “A Dying Fall”
Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch
Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance . . .
. . . quiescent unions . . . thoughts of bliss, of hope . . .
long-dreamt appearances of wished-on stars . . .
like childhood’s long-occluded, nebulous
slow drift of half-formed visions . . . slip and bra . . .
Wan moonlight traced your features, perilous,
in danger of extinction, should your hair
fall softly on my eyes, or should a kiss
cause them to close, or should my fingers dare
to leave off childhood for some new design
of whiter lace, of flesh incarnadine.
Published by The New Stylus and Love Poems and Poets
Lozenge
by Michael R. Burch
When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a lozenge of sugar.
When I held you in my arms, I did not feel
our lack of completeness,
knowing how easy it was
for us to cling to each other.
And there were nights when the clouds
sped across the moon’s face,
exposing such rarified brightness
we did not witness
so much as embrace
love’s human appearance.
Spring Was Delayed
by Michael R. Burch
Winter came early:
the driving snows,
the delicate frosts
that crystallize
all we forget
or refuse to know,
all we regret
that makes us wise.
Spring was delayed:
the nubile rose,
the tentative sun,
the wind’s soft sighs,
all we omit
or refuse to show,
whatever we shield
behind guarded eyes.
Originally published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)
Almost
by Michael R. Burch
We had—almost—an affair.
You almost ran your fingers through my hair.
I almost kissed the almonds of your toes.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.
You almost contemplated using Nair
and adding henna highlights to your hair,
while I considered plucking you a Rose.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.
I almost found the words to say, “I care.”
We almost kissed, and yet you didn’t dare.
I heard coarse stubble grate against your hose.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.
You almost called me suave and debonair
(perhaps because my chest is pale and bare?).
I almost bought you edible underclothes.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.
I almost asked you where you kept your lair
and if by chance I might ****** you there.
You almost tweezed the redwoods from my nose.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.
We almost danced like Rogers and Astaire
on gliding feet; we almost waltzed on air ...
until I mashed your plain, unpolished toes.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.
I almost was strange Sonny to your Cher.
We almost sat in love’s electric chair
to be enlightninged, till our hearts unfroze.
We almost loved,
that’s always how love goes.
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.
Published by Sonnet Writers, Setu (India), Borderless Journal (Singapore), UlibM (Thailand) and Vallance Review (Canada)
Remembering Not to Call
by Michael R. Burch
a villanelle permitting mourning, for my mother, Christine Ena Burch
The hardest thing of all,
after telling her everything,
is remembering not to call.
Now the phone hanging on the wall
will never announce her ring:
the hardest thing of all
for children, however tall.
And the hardest thing this spring
will be remembering not to call
the one who was everything.
That the songbirds will nevermore sing
is the hardest thing of all
for those who once listened, in thrall,
and welcomed the message they bring,
since they won’t remember to call.
And the hardest thing this fall
will be a number with no one to ring.
No, the hardest thing of all
is remembering not to call.
Nun Fun Undone
by Michael R. Burch
for and after Richard Moore
Abbesses’
recesses
are not for excesses!
Preposterous Eros
by Michael R. Burch
“Preposterous Eros” – Patricia Falanga
Preposterous Eros shot me in
the buttocks, with a Devilish grin,
spent all my money in a rush
then left my heart effete pink mush.
Originally published by Snakeskin
She bathes in silver
by Michael R. Burch
She bathes in silver
~~~~~afloat~~~~~
on her reflections ...
Herons
by Michael R. Burch
The herons stand,
sentry-like, at attention ...
rigid observers of some unknown command.
Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.
Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain green;
for your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain.
By all truth, I tell you faithfully
that you are of life and death, my queen;
for at my death this truth shall be seen:
your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.
Published by Better Than Starbucks
I Loved You
by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
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.
Published by Setu (India), Poetry Hub and The HyperTexts
Erin
by Michael R. Burch
All that’s left of Ireland is her hair—
bright carrot—and her milkmaid-pallid skin,
her brilliant air of cavalier despair,
her train of children—some conceived in sin,
the others to avoid it. For nowhere
is evidence of thought. Devout, pale, thin,
gay, nonchalant, all radiance. So fair!
How can men look upon her and not spin
like wobbly buoys churned by her skirt’s brisk air?
They buy. They ***** to pat her nyloned shin,
to share her elevated, pale Despair ...
to find at last two spirits ease no one’s.
All that’s left of Ireland is the Care,
her impish grin, green eyes like leprechauns’.
The Sky Was Turning Blue
by Michael R. Burch
for Vicky
Yesterday I saw you
as the snow flurries died,
spent winds becalmed.
When I saw your solemn face
alone in the crowd,
I felt my heart, so long embalmed,
begin to beat aloud.
Was it another winter,
another day like this?
Was it so long ago?
Where you the rose-cheeked girl
who slapped my face, then stole a kiss?
Was the sky this gray with snow,
my heart so all a-whirl?
How is it in one moment
it was twenty years ago,
lost worlds remade anew?
When your eyes met mine, I knew
you felt it too, as though
we heard the robin's song
and the sky was turning blue.
Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch
Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace
you climb, skittish kite...
What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there
so that all that remains is to
fall?
Only a little longer the wind invests its sighs;
you stall ...
spread-eagled as the canvas snaps
and ***** its white rebellious wings,
and all
the houses watch with baffled eyes.
Published by Poetry Porch and The Chained Muse
Con Artistry
by Michael R. Burch
The trick of life is like the sleight of hand
of gamblers holding deuces by the glow
of veiled back rooms, or aces; soon we’ll know
who folds, who stands . . .
The trick of life is like the pool shark’s shot—
the wild massé across green velvet felt
that leaves the winner loser. No, it’s not
the rack, the hand that’s dealt . . .
The trick of life is knowing that the odds
are never in one’s favor, that to win
is only to delay the acts of gods
who’d ante death for sin . . .
and death for goodness, death for in-between.
The rules have never changed; the artist knows
the oldest con is life; the chips he blows
can’t be redeemed.
Stay With Me Tonight
by Michael R. Burch
Stay with me tonight;
be gentle with me as the leaves are gentle
falling to the earth.
And whisper, O my love,
how that every bright thing, though scattered afar,
retains yet its worth.
Stay with me tonight;
be as a petal long-awaited blooming in my hand.
Lift your face to mine
and touch me with your lips
till I feel the warm benevolence of your breath’s
heady fragrance like wine.
That which we had
when pale and waning as the dying moon at dawn,
outshone the sun.
And so lead me back tonight
through bright waterfalls of light
to where we shine as one.
Originally published by The Lyric
Tillage
by Michael R. Burch
What stirs within me
is no great welling
straining to flood forth,
but an emptiness
waiting to be filled.
I am not an orchard
ready to be harvested,
but a field
rough and barren
waiting to be tilled.
A Possible Argument for Mercy
by Michael R. Burch
Did heaven ever seem so far?
Remember—we are as You were,
but all our lives, from birth to death—
Gethsemane in every breath.
To Know You as Mary
by Michael R. Burch
To know you as Mary,
when you spoke her name
and her world was never the same ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.
O, then I would laugh
and be glad that I came,
never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain ...
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom.
I might not think this earth
the sharp focus of pain
if I heard you exclaim—
beside the still tomb
where the spring roses bloom
my most unexpected, unwarranted name!
But you never spoke. Explain?
What Would Santa Claus Say?
by Michael R. Burch
What would Santa Claus say,
I wonder,
about Jesus returning
to **** and plunder?
For he’ll likely return
on Christmas Day
to blow the bad
little boys away!
When He flashes like lightning
across the skies
and many a homosexual
dies,
when the harlots and heretics
are ripped asunder,
what will the Easter Bunny think,
I wonder?
Published by Lucid Rhythms, Poet’s Corner and VYBRANÉ PREKLADY BÁSNÍ Z ANGLICTINY, where it was translated into Czech by Vaclav ZJ Pinkava
A Child’s Christmas Prayer of Despair for a Hindu Saint
by Michael R. Burch
Santa Claus,
for Christmas, please,
don’t bring me toys, or games, or candy . . .
just . . . Santa, please,
I’m on my knees! . . .
please don’t let Jesus torture Gandhi!
Published by Philosophical Percolations and The HyperTexts
fog
by michael r. burch
ur just a bit of fluff
drifting out over the ocean,
unleashing an atom of rain,
causing a minor commotion,
for which u expect awesome GODS
to pay u SUPREME DEVOTION!
... but ur just a smidgen of mist
unlikely to be missed ...
where did u get the notion?
brrExit or sigh(t) or final curtain
by michael r. burch
what would u give
to simply not exist—
for a painless exit?
he asked himself, uncertain.
then from behind
the hospital room curtain
a patient screamed—
"my life!"
Originally published by Setu (India)
no foothold
by michael r. burch
there is no hope;
therefore i became invulnerable to love.
now even god cannot move me:
nothing to push or shove,
no foothold.
so let me live out my remaining days in clarity,
mine being the only nativity,
my death the final crucifixion
and apocalypse,
as far as the i can see ...
u-turn: another way to look at religion
by michael r. burch
... u were born(e) orphaned from Ecstasy
into this lower realm: just one of the inching worms
dreaming of Beatification;
u’d love to make a u-turn back to Divinity,
but having misplaced ur chrysalis,
can only chant magical phrases,
like Circe luring ulysses back into the pigsty ...
Less Heroic Couplets: Funding Fundamentals
by Michael R. Burch
“I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.” — Mark Twain
Making sense from nonsense is quite sensible! Suppose
you’re running low on moolah, need some cash to paint your toes ...
Just invent a new religion; claim it saves lost souls from hell;
have the converts write you checks; take major debit cards as well;
take MasterCard and Visa and good-as-gold Amex;
hell, lend and charge them interest, whether payday loan or flex.
Thus out of perfect nonsense, glittery ores of this great mine,
you’ll earn an easy living and your toes will truly shine!
Originally published by Lighten Up Online
In His Kingdom of Corpses
by Michael R. Burch
1.
In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many enraged discourses,
aghast, from some mountain peak
where He’s lectured men on “compassion”
while the sparrows around Him fell
and babes, for His meager ration
of rain, died and went to hell,
unbaptized, for that’s His fashion.
2.
In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to vent
in many obscure discourses
on the need for man to repent,
to admit he’s a lust-addled sinner;
give up threesomes and riches and fame;
to be disciplined at his dinner
though always he dies the same,
whether fatter or thinner.
3.
In his kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many absurd discourses
of man’s Ego, precipitous Peak!,
while demanding praise and worship,
and the bending of every knee.
And though He sounds like the Devil,
all good Christian men agree:
He loves them, indubitably.
Published by The Chimaera, Cyclamens and Swords and Lucid Rhythms
thanksgiving prayer of the parasites
by michael r. burch
GODD is great;
GODD is good;
let us thank HIM
for our food.
by HIS hand
we all are fed;
give us now
our daily dead:
ah-men!
(p.s.,
most gracious
& salacious
HEAVENLY LORD,
we thank YOU in advance for
meals galore
of loverly gore:
of precious
delicious
sumptuous
scrumptious
human flesh!)
Originally published by Setu (India)
Siren Song
by Michael R. Burch
The Lorelei’s
soft cries
entreat mariners to save her...
How can they resist
her seductive voice through the mist?
Soon she will savor
the flavor
of sweet human flesh.
Sun Poem
by Michael R. Burch
I have suffused myself in poetry
as a lizard basks, soaking up sun,
scales nakedly glinting; its glorious light
he understands—when it comes, it comes.
A flood of light leaches down to his bones,
his feral eye blinks—bold, curious, bright.
Now night and soon winter lie brooding, damp, chilling;
here shadows foretell the great darkness ahead.
Yet he stretches in rapture, his hot blood thrilling,
simple yet fierce on his hard stone bed,
his tongue flicking rhythms,
the sun—throbbing, spilling.
Rounds
by Michael R. Burch
Solitude surrounds me
though nearby laughter sounds;
around me mingle men who think
to drink their demons down,
in rounds.
Now agony still hounds me
though elsewhere mirth abounds;
hidebound I stand and try to think,
not sink still further down,
spellbound.
Their ecstasy astounds me,
though drunkenness compounds
resounding laughter into joy;
alloy such glee with beer and see
bliss found.
At the Natchez Trace
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
I.
Solitude surrounds me
though nearby laughter sounds;
around me mingle men who think
to drink their demons down,
in rounds.
Beside me stands a woman,
a stanza in the song
that plays so low and fluting
and bids me sing along.
Beside me stands a woman
whose eyes reveal her soul,
whose cheeks are soft as eiderdown,
whose hips and ******* are full.
Beside me stands a woman
who scarcely knows my name;
but I would have her know my heart
if only I knew where to start...
II.
Not every man is as he seems;
not all are prone to poems and dreams.
Not every man would take the time
to meter out his heart in rhyme.
But I am not as other men—
my heart is sentenced to this pen.
III.
Men speak of their "ambition"
but they only know its name . . .
I never say the word aloud,
but I have felt the Flame.
IV.
Now, standing here, I do not dare
to let her know that I might care;
I never learned the lines to use;
I never worked the wolves' bold ruse.
But if she looks my way again,
perhaps I will, if only then.
V.
How can a man have come so far
in searching after every star,
and yet today,
though miles away,
look back upon the winding way,
and see himself as he was then,
a child of eight or nine or ten,
and not know more?
VI.
My life is not empty; I have my desire . . .
I write in a moment that few men can know,
when my nerves are on fire
and my heart does not tire
though it pounds at my breast—
wrenching blow after blow.
VII.
And in all I attempted, I also succeeded;
few men have more talent to do what I do.
But in one respect, I stand now defeated;
In love I could never make magic come true.
VIII.
If I had been born to be handsome and charming,
then love might have come to me easily as well.
But if had that been, would I then have written?
If not, I'd remain; **** that demon to hell!
IX.
Beside me stands a woman,
but others look her way
and in their eyes are eagerness . . .
for passion and a wild caress?
But who am I to say?
Beside me stands a woman;
she conjures up the night
and wraps itself around her
till others flit about her
like moths drawn to firelight.
X.
And I, myself, am just as they,
wondering when the light might fade,
yet knowing should it not dim soon
that I might fall and be consumed.
XI.
I write from despair
in the silence of morning
for want of a prayer
and the need of the mourning.
And loneliness grips my heart like a vise;
my anguish is harsher and colder than ice.
But poetry can bring my heart healing
and deaden the pain, or lessen the feeling.
And so I must write till at last sleep has called me
and hope at that moment my pen has not failed me.
XII.
Beside me stands a woman,
a mystery to me.
I long to hold her in my arms;
I also long to flee.
Beside me stands a woman;
how many has she known
more handsome, charming,
chic, alarming?
I hope I never know.
Beside me stands a woman;
how many has she known
who ever wrote her such a poem?
I know not even one.
Progress
by Michael R. Burch
There is no sense of urgency
at the local Burger King.
Birds and squirrels squabble outside
for the last scraps of autumn:
remnants of buns,
goopy pulps of dill pickles,
mucousy lettuce,
sesame seeds.
Inside, the workers all move
with the same très-glamorous lethargy,
conserving their energy, one assumes,
for more pressing endeavors: concerts and proms,
pep rallies, keg parties,
reruns of Jenny McCarthy on MTV.
The manager, as usual, is on the phone,
talking to her boyfriend.
She gently smiles,
brushing back wisps of insouciant hair,
ready for the cover of Glamour or Vogue.
Through her filmy white blouse
an indiscreet strap
suspends a lace cup
through which somehow the ****** still shows.
Progress, we guess...
and wait patiently in line,
hoping the Pokémons hold out.
Resurrecting Passion
by Michael R. Burch
Last night, while dawn was far away
and rain streaked gray, tumescent skies,
as thunder boomed and lightning railed,
I conjured words, where passion failed...
But, oh, that you were mine tonight,
sprawled in this bed, held in these arms,
your ******* pale baubles in my hands,
our bodies bent to old demands...
Such passions we might resurrect,
if only time and distance waned
and brought us back together;
now
I pray these things might be, somehow.
But time has left us twisted, torn,
and we are more apart than miles.
How have you come to be so far—
as distant as an unseen star?
So that, while dawn is far away,
my thoughts might not return to you,
I feed your portrait to banked flames,
but as they feast, I burn for you.
Published by Songs of Innocence, The Chained Muse and New Lyre
Shark
by Michael R. Burch
They are all unknowable,
these rough pale men—
haunting dim pool rooms like shadows,
propped up on bar stools like scarecrows,
nodding and sagging in the fraying light...
I am not of them,
as I glide among them—
eliding the amorphous camaraderie
they are as unlikely to spell as to feel,
camouflaged in my own pale dichotomy...
That there are women who love them defies belief—
with their missing teeth,
their hair in thin shocks
where here and there a gap of scalp gleams like bizarre chrome,
their smell rank as wet sawdust or mildewed laundry...
And yet—
and yet there is someone who loves me:
She sits by the telephone
in the lengthening shadows
and pregnant grief...
They appreciate skill at pool, not words.
They frown at massés,
at the cue ***** contortions across green felt.
They hand me their hard-earned money with reluctant smiles.
A heart might melt at the thought of their children lying in squalor...
At night I dream of them in bed, toothless, kissing.
With me, it’s harder to say what is missing...
Love Is Not Love
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Love is not love that never looked
within itself and questioned all,
curled up like a zygote in a ball,
throbbed, sobbed and shook.
(Or went on a binge at a nearby mall,
then would not cook.)
Love is not love that never winced,
then smiled, convinced
that soar’s the prerequisite of fall.
When all
its wounds and scars have been saline-rinsed,
where does Love find the wherewithal
to try again,
endeavor, when
all that it knows
is: O, because!
Published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Deronda Review, Better Than Starbucks and Stremez (translated into Macedonian by Marija Girevska)
Aflutter
by Michael R. Burch
This rainbow is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh.—Yahweh
You are gentle now, and in your failing hour
how like the child you were, you seem again,
and smile as sadly as the girl
(age ten?)
who held the sparrow with the mangled wing
close to her heart.
It marveled at your power
but would not mend.
And so the world renews
old vows it seemed to make: false promises
spring whispers, as if nothing perishes
that does not resurrect to wilder hues
like rainbows’ eerie pacts we apprehend
but cannot fail to keep.
Now in your eyes
I see the end of life that only dies
and does not care for bright, translucent lies.
Are tears so precious? These few, let us spend
together, as before, then lay to rest
these sparrows’ hearts aflutter at each breast.
Published by The Lyric, Poetry Life & Times and The Eclectic Muse (Canada)
For Ali, Fighting Time
by Michael R. Burch
So now your speech is not as clear . . .
time took its toll each telling year . . .
and O how tragic that your art,
so brutal, broke your savage heart.
But we who cheered each blow that fell
within that ring of torrent hell
never dreamed to see you maimed,
bowed and bloodied, listless, tamed.
For you were not as other men
as we cheered and cursed you then;
no, you commanded dreams and time—
blackgold Adonis, bold, sublime.
And once your glory leapt like fire—
pure and potent. No desire
ever burned as fierce or bright.
Oh Ali, Ali . . . win this fight!
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,—
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, Nutty Stories (South Africa), Inspirational Stories, Famous Poets & Poems, Poetry Life & Times, English Poetry and Love Poems and Poets
The Gardener’s Roses
by Michael R. Burch
Mary Magdalene, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, “Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.”
I too have come to the cave;
within: strange, half-glimpsed forms
and ghostly paradigms of things.
Here, nothing warms
this lightening moment of the dawn,
pale tendrils spreading east.
And I, of all who followed Him,
by far the least...
The women take no note of me;
I do not recognize
the men in white, the gardener,
these unfamiliar skies...
Faint scent of roses, then—a touch!
I turn, and I see: You.
My Lord, why do You tarry here:
Another waits, Whose love is true?
Although My Father waits, and bliss;
though angels call—ecstatic crew!—
I gathered roses for a Friend.
I waited here, for You.
Published by The CommonPlace, The Journals, Somewhere Along The Beaten Path, Museum of Learning, The Eclectic Muse (Canada), Borderless Journal (Singapore), FreeXpression (Australia)
Loose Knit
by Michael R. Burch
She blesses the needle,
fetches fine red stitches,
criss-crossing, embroidering dreams
in the delicate fabric.
And if her hand jerks and twitches in puppet-like fits,
she tells herself
reality is not as threadbare as it seems...
that a little more darning may gather loose seams.
She weaves an unraveling tapestry
of fatigue and remorse and pain ...
only the nervously pecking needle
****** her to motion, again and again.
Published by The Chariton Review (as “The Knitter”), Penumbra, Black Bear Review, Triplopia
If You Come to San Miguel
by Michael R. Burch
If you come to San Miguel
before the orchids fall,
we might stroll through lengthening shadows
those deserted streets
where love first bloomed...
You might buy the same cheap musk
from that mud-spattered stall
where with furtive eyes the vendor
watched his fragrant wares
perfume your *******
Where lean men mend tattered nets,
disgruntled sea gulls chide;
we might find that cafetucho
where through grimy panes
sunset implodes...
Where tall cranes spin canvassed loads,
the strange anhingas glide.
Green brine laps splintered moorings,
rusted iron chains grind,
weighed and anchored in the past,
held fast by luminescent tides...
Should you come to San Miguel?
Let love decide.
Published by Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times and Muddy River Poetry Review
Ivy
by Michael R. Burch
“Van trepando en mi viejo dolor como las yedras.” – Pablo Neruda
“They climb on my old suffering like ivy.”
Ivy winds around these sagging structures
from the flagstones
to the eave heights,
and, clinging, holds intact
what cannot be saved of their loose entrails.
Through long, blustery nights of dripping condensation,
cured in the humidors of innumerable forgotten summers,
waxy, unguent,
palely, indifferently fragrant, it climbs,
pausing at last to see
the alien sparkle of dew
beading delicate sparrowgrass.
Coarse saw grass, thin skunk grass, clumped mildewed yellow gorse
grow all around, and here remorse, things past,
watch ivy climb and bend,
and, in the end, we ask
if grief is worth the gaps it leaps to mend.
Originally published by Nisqually Delta Review
Free Fall (II)
by Michael R. Burch
I have no earthly remembrance of you, as if
we were never of earth, but merely white clouds adrift,
frail cirri swirling through Himalayan altitudes—
no more man and woman than exhausted breath—unable to fall
back to solid existence, despite the air’s sparseness: all
our being borne up, because of our lightness,
toward the sun’s unendurable brightness...
But since I touched you, fire consumes each wing!
We who are unable to fly, stall
contemplating disaster. Despair like an anchor, like an iron ball,
heavier than ballast, sinks on its thick-looped chain
toward the earth, and soon thereafter shall be sufficient pain
to recall existence, to make the coming darkness everlasting.
Sep 5, 2024
Sep 5, 2024 at 10:58 PM UTC
~
*Bring your whirlwinds with you;
in the snow angel summer
bring Margot the sun.
In the hour of red glare
a rush to pick slowberries
before getting caught up in the silk.
Prisms, mirrors, lenses!
strategies for combatting visibility:
keep your eyes closed,
face away from the window.
The myriad threads of people in hiding,
they eat their own web each day,
and yet something always shines
in the heart's secret annex.
Men and women are
separated from each other,
the girls are on a train
to the Bergen-Belsen,
"white founts falling
in the courts of the sun."
Margot now cries quietly;
so silently she weeps over
sunshine and hate.*
~
Jan 4, 2024
Jan 4, 2024 at 3:41 PM UTC
On one of the myriad bays
along the Maine coast. Keep the holocaust
at bay I said to Dave because
you’ll spend all day gathering
2,000 calories and still be miserable hungry.
An undiminished population of humans is risible.
Black spruce and balsam fir,
you can eat the inner bark
in a starvation emergency.
There’s plenty of Cornus—bunchberry—
each orange pith around the stone
worth maybe a quarter calorie.
Lots of sarsparilla but the fruits
not out yet and to date I have not
savored one. Let’s see—dandelion
of course and huckleberry but
the most important source of sustenance
would be seaweed.
Learn your mushrooms! for the protein.
Accept the situation
come the apocalypse.
I struggle against my insignificance
but it would be better to struggle
against my ignorance.
Less effortlessness, more fishermanliness.
That’s the lesson of this Maine vacation
there’s a lot you can eat when in need—
the hips of roses and the pips of grasses.
And an endless supply of seaweed—
bladderwrack, dulse, kelp and thin green lettuce.
Sep 12, 2023
Sep 12, 2023 at 6:09 AM UTC
A girl in the camp
is forced to sing every night --
In her heart she cries.
Oct 7, 2022
Oct 7, 2022 at 10:58 AM UTC
~
If Only Tonight We Could Sleep...
I'm as Scared As You
Hidden in The Upstairs Room
One Hundred Years
And A Thousand Hours
From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
Please sing me a Lullaby
One of Faith and Doubt
Or of How Beautiful You Are
Dream with me One More Time
Underneath the Stars
On A Night Like This
Far removed from The Empty World
Maybe Someday
We'll be free To Wish Impossible Things
Like Dressing Up in our finest and dancing
Where the Birds Always Sing
Or picking Bloodflowers
On The Last Day of Summer
It would be Just Like Heaven...
~
Jun 9, 2021
Jun 9, 2021 at 3:23 PM UTC
Holocaust Poem Translations
Speechless at Auschwitz
by Ko Un
translation by Michael R. Burch
At Auschwitz
piles of glasses
mountains of shoes
returning, we stared out different windows.
Published by Brief Poems
Original text:
Ad Auschwitz
pile di occhiali
montagne di scarpe
sulla via del ritorno
ognuno fissava fuori dal finestrino in direzione diversa.
(da Fiori di un istante, 2001)
Keywords/Tags: Ko Un, Holocaust, translation, speechless, Auschwitz, glasses, shoes, windows, silent, tongue-tied, wordless, mrbholo
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.
Frantisek “Franta” Bass was a Jewish boy born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1930. When he was just eleven years old, his family was deported by the Nazis to Terezin, where the SS had created a hybrid Ghetto/Concentration Camp just north of Prague (it was also known as Theresienstadt). Franta was one of many little boys and girls who lived there under terrible conditions for three years. He was then sent to Auschwitz, where on October 28th, 1944, he was murdered at age fourteen.
The Garden
by Franta Bass
translation by Michael R. Burch
A small garden,
so fragrant and full of roses!
The path the little boy takes
is guarded by thorns.
A small boy, a sweet boy,
growing like those budding blossoms!
But when the blossoms have bloomed,
the boy will be no more.
Jewish Forever
by Franta Bass
translation by Michael R. Burch
I am a Jew and always will be, forever!
Even if I should starve,
I will never submit!
But I will always fight for my people,
with my honor,
to their credit!
And I will never be ashamed of them;
this is my vow.
I am so very proud of my people now!
How dignified they are, in their grief!
And though I may die, oppressed,
still I will always return to life ...
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.
“Was gesagt werden muss” (“What must be said”)
by Günter Grass
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Why have I remained silent, so long,
failing to mention something openly practiced
in war games which now threaten to leave us
merely meaningless footnotes?
Someone’s alleged “right” to strike first
might annihilate a beleaguered nation
whose people march to a martinet’s tune,
compelled to pageants of orchestrated obedience.
Why? Merely because of the suspicion
that a bomb might be built by Iranians.
But why do I hesitate, forbidding myself
to name that other nation, where, for years
―shrouded in secrecy―
a formidable nuclear capability has existed
beyond all control, simply because
no inspections were ever allowed?
The universal concealment of this fact
abetted by my own incriminating silence
now feels like a heavy, enforced lie,
an oppressive inhibition, a vice,
a strong constraint, which, if dismissed,
immediately incurs the verdict “anti-Semitism.”
But now my own country,
guilty of its unprecedented crimes
which continually demand remembrance,
once again seeking financial gain
(although with glib lips we call it “reparations”)
has delivered yet another submarine to Israel―
this one designed to deliver annihilating warheads
capable of exterminating all life
where the existence of even a single nuclear weapon remains unproven,
but where suspicion now serves as a substitute for evidence.
So now I will say what must be said.
Why did I remain silent so long?
Because I thought my origins,
tarred by an ineradicable stain,
forbade me to declare the truth to Israel,
a country to which I am and will always remain attached.
Why is it only now that I say,
in my advancing age,
and with my last drop of ink
on the final page
that Israel’s nuclear weapons endanger
an already fragile world peace?
Because tomorrow might be too late,
and so the truth must be heard today.
And because we Germans,
already burdened with many weighty crimes,
could become enablers of yet another,
one easily foreseen,
and thus no excuse could ever erase our complicity.
Furthermore, I’ve broken my silence
because I’m sick of the West’s hypocrisy
and because I hope many others too
will free themselves from the shackles of silence,
and speak out to renounce violence
by insisting on permanent supervision
of Israel’s atomic power and Iran’s
by an international agency
accepted by both governments.
Only thus can we find the path to peace
for Israelis and Palestinians and everyone else
living in a region currently consumed by madness
―and ultimately, for ourselves.
Published in Süddeutschen Zeitung (April 4, 2012). Günter Wilhelm Grass (1927-) is a German-Kashubian novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely regarded as Germany's most famous living writer. Grass is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. The Tin Drum was adapted into a film that won both the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Swedish Academy, upon awarding Grass the Nobel Prize in Literature, noted him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history."
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.
Jan 23, 2021
Jan 23, 2021 at 3:27 AM UTC
There’s a holocaust
sweeping through my body
but i call it
love,
strap myself to its stake
as a sacrifice, relish
how its fire
dignifies me,
how the tongue-like torso
of my scent
rolls out to taste
God.
You, with the hot air
for hair, you
with the sparking skin,
feed my flames,
you
hearteater, the mouths
on your cheeks
open wide
& I enter, as if to join
the rest of me; see
how all that is left
circulating in my veins
is your voice; my body,
now inanimate,
an instrument for your
heartsong—hear
its cinders sing like
cicadas—here
is the sequel to your stones
thrice striked.
Dec 26, 2020
Dec 26, 2020 at 1:29 PM UTC
One nightmare I had a dream, a dream of a terrible exhibit.
I was at a camp where nightmares grew, a place evil and ridged.
A profound impression was left on me,
the simplest of it all was the shoes in block 5.
The simplicity of it all seemed crazy,
this place called Auschwitz where I wandered in disbelief.
Imagine if such evil was in power today
with access to all our technology.
Cattle for the slaughter, they would slaughter us all,
their hate-filled solution for the innocent soul.
Human beings are inherently cruel this exhibit rang sadly true.
Fascism with applied biology, a profound impression to say the least.
The simplicity of it all seemed crazy,
a room full of shoes, battered and abused,
a room full of shoes from dead babies.
A profound impression was left on me.
This place called Auschwitz
where I wandered in disbelief.
Jul 4, 2013
Jul 4, 2013 at 5:10 AM UTC
“Take off your clothes!”
It was strange,
but we did,
the whole room full
of women and girls
watched by male guards.
“Take off all jewelry!”
Bracelet and necklace
were easy –
off they came.
But earrings were a problem.
I’d kept loosing them,
and still would.
They slipped
from my pierced ears
so mother had
them soldiered closed.
“Now,” she said,
“one pair
will last your life,”
and they almost did
except for now.
They must come off
but couldn’t.
The simple, efficient,
final solution?
Cut my ears!
Oct 22, 2020
Oct 22, 2020 at 7:48 PM UTC
Broken glass
filled the streets
dignity destroyed
and livelihoods.
Thousand years of culture burned
in one planned
“random” riot –
government approved.
Barbarity arose
against imagined enemies
who were not.
Broken glass
shattered lives
terror reigned
against helpless millions –
nations stood unmoving.
Never again. Never…
NEVER AGAIN!
Oct 22, 2020
Oct 22, 2020 at 7:44 PM UTC