Newdigate prize poem recited in the Sheldonian Theatre
Oxford June 26th, 1878.

To my friend George Fleming author of ‘The Nile Novel’
and ‘Mirage’

I.

A year ago I breathed the Italian air,—
And yet, methinks this northern Spring is fair,—
These fields made golden with the flower of March,
The throstle singing on the feathered larch,
The cawing rooks, the wood-doves fluttering by,
The little clouds that race across the sky;
And fair the violet’s gentle drooping head,
The primrose, pale for love uncomforted,
The rose that burgeons on the climbing briar,
The crocus-bed, (that seems a moon of fire
Round-girdled with a purple marriage-ring);
And all the flowers of our English Spring,
Fond snowdrops, and the bright-starred daffodil.
Up starts the lark beside the murmuring mill,
And breaks the gossamer-threads of early dew;
And down the river, like a flame of blue,
Keen as an arrow flies the water-king,
While the brown linnets in the greenwood sing.
A year ago!—it seems a little time
Since last I saw that lordly southern clime,
Where flower and fruit to purple radiance blow,
And like bright lamps the fabled apples glow.
Full Spring it was—and by rich flowering vines,
Dark olive-groves and noble forest-pines,
I rode at will; the moist glad air was sweet,
The white road rang beneath my horse’s feet,
And musing on Ravenna’s ancient name,
I watched the day till, marked with wounds of flame,
The turquoise sky to burnished gold was turned.

O how my heart with boyish passion burned,
When far away across the sedge and mere
I saw that Holy City rising clear,
Crowned with her crown of towers!—On and on
I galloped, racing with the setting sun,
And ere the crimson after-glow was passed,
I stood within Ravenna’s walls at last!

II.

How strangely still! no sound of life or joy
Startles the air; no laughing shepherd-boy
Pipes on his reed, nor ever through the day
Comes the glad sound of children at their play:
O sad, and sweet, and silent! surely here
A man might dwell apart from troublous fear,
Watching the tide of seasons as they flow
From amorous Spring to Winter’s rain and snow,
And have no thought of sorrow;—here, indeed,
Are Lethe’s waters, and that fatal ****
Which makes a man forget his fatherland.

Ay! amid lotus-meadows dost thou stand,
Like Proserpine, with poppy-laden head,
Guarding the holy ashes of the dead.
For though thy brood of warrior sons hath ceased,
Thy noble dead are with thee!—they at least
Are faithful to thine honour:—guard them well,
O childless city! for a mighty spell,
To wake men’s hearts to dreams of things sublime,
Are the lone tombs where rest the Great of Time.

III.


Yon lonely pillar, rising on the plain,
Marks where the bravest knight of France was slain,—
The Prince of chivalry, the Lord of war,
Gaston de Foix:  for some untimely star
Led him against thy city, and he fell,
As falls some forest-lion fighting well.
Taken from life while life and love were new,
He lies beneath God’s seamless veil of blue;
Tall lance-like reeds wave sadly o’er his head,
And oleanders bloom to deeper red,
Where his bright youth flowed crimson on the ground.

Look farther north unto that broken mound,—
There, prisoned now within a lordly tomb
Raised by a daughter’s hand, in lonely gloom,
Huge-limbed Theodoric, the Gothic king,
Sleeps after all his weary conquering.
Time hath not spared his ruin,—wind and rain
Have broken down his stronghold; and again
We see that Death is mighty lord of all,
And king and clown to ashen dust must fall

Mighty indeed their glory! yet to me
Barbaric king, or knight of chivalry,
Or the great queen herself, were poor and vain,
Beside the grave where Dante rests from pain.
His gilded shrine lies open to the air;
And cunning sculptor’s hands have carven there
The calm white brow, as calm as earliest morn,
The eyes that flashed with passionate love and scorn,
The lips that sang of Heaven and of Hell,
The almond-face which Giotto drew so well,
The weary face of Dante;—to this day,
Here in his place of resting, far away
From Arno’s yellow waters, rushing down
Through the wide bridges of that fairy town,
Where the tall tower of Giotto seems to rise
A marble lily under sapphire skies!

Alas! my Dante! thou hast known the pain
Of meaner lives,—the exile’s galling chain,
How steep the stairs within kings’ houses are,
And all the petty miseries which mar
Man’s nobler nature with the sense of wrong.
Yet this dull world is grateful for thy song;
Our nations do thee homage,—even she,
That cruel queen of vine-clad Tuscany,
Who bound with crown of thorns thy living brow,
Hath decked thine empty tomb with laurels now,
And begs in vain the ashes of her son.

O mightiest exile! all thy grief is done:
Thy soul walks now beside thy Beatrice;
Ravenna guards thine ashes:  sleep in peace.

IV.

How lone this palace is; how grey the walls!
No minstrel now wakes echoes in these halls.
The broken chain lies rusting on the door,
And noisome weeds have split the marble floor:
Here lurks the snake, and here the lizards run
By the stone lions blinking in the sun.
Byron dwelt here in love and revelry
For two long years—a second Anthony,
Who of the world another Actium made!
Yet suffered not his royal soul to fade,
Or lyre to break, or lance to grow less keen,
’Neath any wiles of an Egyptian queen.
For from the East there came a mighty cry,
And Greece stood up to fight for Liberty,
And called him from Ravenna:  never knight
Rode forth more nobly to wild scenes of fight!
None fell more bravely on ensanguined field,
Borne like a Spartan back upon his shield!
O Hellas!  Hellas! in thine hour of pride,
Thy day of might, remember him who died
To wrest from off thy limbs the trammelling chain:
O Salamis!  O lone Plataean plain!
O tossing waves of wild Euboean sea!
O wind-swept heights of lone Thermopylae!
He loved you well—ay, not alone in word,
Who freely gave to thee his lyre and sword,
Like AEschylos at well-fought Marathon:

And England, too, shall glory in her son,
Her warrior-poet, first in song and fight.
No longer now shall Slander’s venomed spite
Crawl like a snake across his perfect name,
Or mar the lordly scutcheon of his fame.

For as the olive-garland of the race,
Which lights with joy each eager runner’s face,
As the red cross which saveth men in war,
As a flame-bearded beacon seen from far
By mariners upon a storm-tossed sea,—
Such was his love for Greece and Liberty!

Byron, thy crowns are ever fresh and green:
Red leaves of rose from Sapphic Mitylene
Shall bind thy brows; the myrtle blooms for thee,
In hidden glades by lonely Castaly;
The laurels wait thy coming:  all are thine,
And round thy head one perfect wreath will twine.

V.

The pine-tops rocked before the evening breeze
With the hoarse murmur of the wintry seas,
And the tall stems were streaked with amber bright;—
I wandered through the wood in wild delight,
Some startled bird, with fluttering wings and fleet,
Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet,
Like silver crowns, the pale narcissi lay,
And small birds sang on every twining spray.
O waving trees, O forest liberty!
Within your haunts at least a man is free,
And half forgets the weary world of strife:
The blood flows hotter, and a sense of life
Wakes i’ the quickening veins, while once again
The woods are filled with gods we fancied slain.
Long time I watched, and surely hoped to see
Some goat-foot Pan make merry minstrelsy
Amid the reeds! some startled Dryad-maid
In girlish flight! or lurking in the glade,
The soft brown limbs, the wanton treacherous face
Of woodland god! Queen Dian in the chase,
White-limbed and terrible, with look of pride,
And leash of boar-hounds leaping at her side!
Or Hylas mirrored in the perfect stream.

O idle heart!  O fond Hellenic dream!
Ere long, with melancholy rise and swell,
The evening chimes, the convent’s vesper bell,
Struck on mine ears amid the amorous flowers.
Alas! alas! these sweet and honied hours
Had whelmed my heart like some encroaching sea,
And drowned all thoughts of black Gethsemane.

VI.

O lone Ravenna! many a tale is told
Of thy great glories in the days of old:
Two thousand years have passed since thou didst see
Caesar ride forth to royal victory.
Mighty thy name when Rome’s lean eagles flew
From Britain’s isles to far Euphrates blue;
And of the peoples thou wast noble queen,
Till in thy streets the Goth and *** were seen.
Discrowned by man, deserted by the sea,
Thou sleepest, rocked in lonely misery!
No longer now upon thy swelling tide,
Pine-forest-like, thy myriad galleys ride!
For where the brass-beaked ships were wont to float,
The weary shepherd pipes his mournful note;
And the white sheep are free to come and go
Where Adria’s purple waters used to flow.

O fair!  O sad!  O Queen uncomforted!
In ruined loveliness thou liest dead,
Alone of all thy sisters; for at last
Italia’s royal warrior hath passed
Rome’s lordliest entrance, and hath worn his crown
In the high temples of the Eternal Town!
The Palatine hath welcomed back her king,
And with his name the seven mountains ring!

And Naples hath outlived her dream of pain,
And mocks her tyrant!  Venice lives again,
New risen from the waters! and the cry
Of Light and Truth, of Love and Liberty,
Is heard in lordly Genoa, and where
The marble spires of Milan wound the air,
Rings from the Alps to the Sicilian shore,
And Dante’s dream is now a dream no more.

But thou, Ravenna, better loved than all,
Thy ruined palaces are but a pall
That hides thy fallen greatness! and thy name
Burns like a grey and flickering candle-flame
Beneath the noonday splendour of the sun
Of new Italia! for the night is done,
The night of dark oppression, and the day
Hath dawned in passionate splendour:  far away
The Austrian hounds are hunted from the land,
Beyond those ice-crowned citadels which stand
Girdling the plain of royal Lombardy,
From the far West unto the Eastern sea.

I know, indeed, that sons of thine have died
In Lissa’s waters, by the mountain-side
Of Aspromonte, on Novara’s plain,—
Nor have thy children died for thee in vain:
And yet, methinks, thou hast not drunk this wine
From grapes new-crushed of Liberty divine,
Thou hast not followed that immortal Star
Which leads the people forth to deeds of war.
Weary of life, thou liest in silent sleep,
As one who marks the lengthening shadows creep,
Careless of all the hurrying hours that run,
Mourning some day of glory, for the sun
Of Freedom hath not shewn to thee his face,
And thou hast caught no flambeau in the race.

Yet wake not from thy slumbers,—rest thee well,
Amidst thy fields of amber asphodel,
Thy lily-sprinkled meadows,—rest thee there,
To mock all human greatness:  who would dare
To vent the paltry sorrows of his life
Before thy ruins, or to praise the strife
Of kings’ ambition, and the barren pride
Of warring nations! wert not thou the Bride
Of the wild Lord of Adria’s stormy sea!
The Queen of double Empires! and to thee
Were not the nations given as thy prey!
And now—thy gates lie open night and day,
The grass grows green on every tower and hall,
The ghastly fig hath cleft thy bastioned wall;
And where thy mailed warriors stood at rest
The midnight owl hath made her secret nest.
O fallen! fallen! from thy high estate,
O city trammelled in the toils of Fate,
Doth nought remain of all thy glorious days,
But a dull shield, a crown of withered bays!

Yet who beneath this night of wars and fears,
From tranquil tower can watch the coming years;
Who can foretell what joys the day shall bring,
Or why before the dawn the linnets sing?
Thou, even thou, mayst wake, as wakes the rose
To crimson splendour from its grave of snows;
As the rich corn-fields rise to red and gold
From these brown lands, now stiff with Winter’s cold;
As from the storm-rack comes a perfect star!

O much-loved city!  I have wandered far
From the wave-circled islands of my home;
Have seen the gloomy mystery of the Dome
Rise slowly from the drear Campagna’s way,
Clothed in the royal purple of the day:
I from the city of the violet crown
Have watched the sun by Corinth’s hill go down,
And marked the ‘myriad laughter’ of the sea
From starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady;
Yet back to thee returns my perfect love,
As to its forest-nest the evening dove.

O poet’s city! one who scarce has seen
Some twenty summers cast their doublets green
For Autumn’s livery, would seek in vain
To wake his lyre to sing a louder strain,
Or tell thy days of glory;—poor indeed
Is the low murmur of the shepherd’s reed,
Where the loud clarion’s blast should shake the sky,
And flame across the heavens! and to try
Such lofty themes were folly:  yet I know
That never felt my heart a nobler glow
Than when I woke the silence of thy street
With clamorous trampling of my horse’s feet,
And saw the city which now I try to sing,
After long days of weary travelling.

VII.

Adieu, Ravenna! but a year ago,
I stood and watched the crimson sunset glow
From the lone chapel on thy marshy plain:
The sky was as a shield that caught the stain
Of blood and battle from the dying sun,
And in the west the circling clouds had spun
A royal robe, which some great God might wear,
While into ocean-seas of purple air
Sank the gold galley of the Lord of Light.

Yet here the gentle stillness of the night
Brings back the swelling tide of memory,
And wakes again my passionate love for thee:
Now is the Spring of Love, yet soon will come
On meadow and tree the Summer’s lordly bloom;
And soon the grass with brighter flowers will blow,
And send up lilies for some boy to mow.
Then before long the Summer’s conqueror,
Rich Autumn-time, the season’s usurer,
Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,
And see it scattered by the spendthrift breeze;
And after that the Winter cold and drear.
So runs the perfect cycle of the year.
And so from youth to manhood do we go,
And fall to weary days and locks of snow.
Love only knows no winter; never dies:
Nor cares for frowning storms or leaden skies
And mine for thee shall never pass away,
Though my weak lips may falter in my lay.

Adieu!  Adieu! yon silent evening star,
The night’s ambassador, doth gleam afar,
And bid the shepherd bring his flocks to fold.
Perchance before our inland seas of gold
Are garnered by the reapers into sheaves,
Perchance before I see the Autumn leaves,
I may behold thy city; and lay down
Low at thy feet the poet’s laurel crown.

Adieu!  Adieu! yon silver lamp, the moon,
Which turns our midnight into perfect noon,
Doth surely light thy towers, guarding well
Where Dante sleeps, where Byron loved to dwell.

Lone leatherback cruises up from the deep, pausing on the fragile reef

to feast ancient eyes upon the show, a bright parade laid out below

butterfly couples paired for life, graceful angels in black and white stripe

brilliant clowns and their toxic lovers, a plodding gang of giant groupers

puffers bob like comic balloons, humble gobies on every menu

beaked parrotfish grinding the coral down, in the ears a constant sound

cowfish blowing puckered kisses, sea stars catching fishy wishes

white-tipped, hammerhead, tiger sharks, triggerfish mean bite worse than their bark

untamed unicorns too wild to ride, dogfish snapping, biting alongside

coral trout color-shifting fools, attracting ladies in dull-hued schools

**** headed wrasse rumbling through, thick lips mumbling go get a room

sea horses nod in labyrinth caves, razor-toothed eels lying in wait

if tentacled embrace should be your fate, nudibranchs will light the way

to a place of bliss, none of this can exist, without the builders

coral and algae bewildered, the ways of man egotistical

rising ocean temperatures, carbon emissions, and el Niño

victim of abundant greed, say goodbye to the Great Barrier Reef

so massive is this magical place, one can see it from outer space

astronauts witness its demise, ninety-percent barren, bleached bone white.

Then Ulysses tore off his rags, and sprang on to the broad
pavement with his bow and his quiver full of arrows. He shed the
arrows on to the ground at his feet and said, “The mighty contest is
at an end. I will now see whether Apollo will vouchsafe it to me to
hit another mark which no man has yet hit.”
  On this he aimed a deadly arrow at Antinous, who was about to take
up a two-handled gold cup to drink his wine and already had it in
his hands. He had no thought of death—who amongst all the revellers
would think that one man, however brave, would stand alone among so
many and **** him? The arrow struck Antinous in the throat, and the
point went clean through his neck, so that he fell over and the cup
dropped from his hand, while a thick stream of blood gushed from his
nostrils. He kicked the table from him and upset the things on it,
so that the bread and roasted meats were all soiled as they fell
over on to the ground. The suitors were in an uproar when they saw
that a man had been hit; they sprang in dismay one and all of them
from their seats and looked everywhere towards the walls, but there
was neither shield nor spear, and they rebuked Ulysses very angrily.
“Stranger,” said they, “you shall pay for shooting people in this way:
om yi you shall see no other contest; you are a doomed man; he whom
you have slain was the foremost youth in Ithaca, and the vultures
shall devour you for having killed him.”
  Thus they spoke, for they thought that he had killed Antinous by
mistake, and did not perceive that death was hanging over the head
of every one of them. But Ulysses glared at them and said:
  “Dogs, did you think that I should not come back from Troy? You have
wasted my substance, have forced my women servants to lie with you,
and have wooed my wife while I was still living. You have feared
neither Cod nor man, and now you shall die.”
  They turned pale with fear as he spoke, and every man looked round
about to see whither he might fly for safety, but Eurymachus alone
spoke.
  “If you are Ulysses,” said he, “then what you have said is just.
We have done much wrong on your lands and in your house. But
Antinous who was the head and front of the offending lies low already.
It was all his doing. It was not that he wanted to marry Penelope;
he did not so much care about that; what he wanted was something quite
different, and Jove has not vouchsafed it to him; he wanted to ****
your son and to be chief man in Ithaca. Now, therefore, that he has
met the death which was his due, spare the lives of your people. We
will make everything good among ourselves, and pay you in full for all
that we have eaten and drunk. Each one of us shall pay you a fine
worth twenty oxen, and we will keep on giving you gold and bronze till
your heart is softened. Until we have done this no one can complain of
your being enraged against us.”
  Ulysses again glared at him and said, “Though you should give me all
that you have in the world both now and all that you ever shall
have, I will not stay my hand till I have paid all of you in full. You
must fight, or fly for your lives; and fly, not a man of you shall.”
  Their hearts sank as they heard him, but Eurymachus again spoke
saying:
  “My friends, this man will give us no quarter. He will stand where
he is and shoot us down till he has killed every man among us. Let
us then show fight; draw your swords, and hold up the tables to shield
you from his arrows. Let us have at him with a rush, to drive him from
the pavement and doorway: we can then get through into the town, and
raise such an alarm as shall soon stay his shooting.”
  As he spoke he drew his keen blade of bronze, sharpened on both
sides, and with a loud cry sprang towards Ulysses, but Ulysses
instantly shot an arrow into his breast that caught him by the
****** and fixed itself in his liver. He dropped his sword and fell
doubled up over his table. The cup and all the meats went over on to
the ground as he smote the earth with his forehead in the agonies of
death, and he kicked the stool with his feet until his eyes were
closed in darkness.
  Then Amphinomus drew his sword and made straight at Ulysses to try
and get him away from the door; but Telemachus was too quick for
him, and struck him from behind; the spear caught him between the
shoulders and went right through his chest, so that he fell heavily to
the ground and struck the earth with his forehead. Then Telemachus
sprang away from him, leaving his spear still in the body, for he
feared that if he stayed to draw it out, some one of the Achaeans
might come up and hack at him with his sword, or knock him down, so he
set off at a run, and immediately was at his father’s side. Then he
said:
  “Father, let me bring you a shield, two spears, and a brass helmet
for your temples. I will arm myself as well, and will bring other
armour for the swineherd and the stockman, for we had better be
armed.”
  “Run and fetch them,” answered Ulysses, “while my arrows hold out,
or when I am alone they may get me away from the door.”
  Telemachus did as his father said, and went off to the store room
where the armour was kept. He chose four shields, eight spears, and
four brass helmets with horse-hair plumes. He brought them with all
speed to his father, and armed himself first, while the stockman and
the swineherd also put on their armour, and took their places near
Ulysses. Meanwhile Ulysses, as long as his arrows lasted, had been
shooting the suitors one by one, and they fell thick on one another:
when his arrows gave out, he set the bow to stand against the end wall
of the house by the door post, and hung a shield four hides thick
about his shoulders; on his comely head he set his helmet, well
wrought with a crest of horse-hair that nodded menacingly above it,
and he grasped two redoubtable bronze-shod spears.
  Now there was a trap door on the wall, while at one end of the
pavement there was an exit leading to a narrow passage, and this
exit was closed by a well-made door. Ulysses told Philoetius to
stand by this door and guard it, for only one person could attack it
at a time. But Agelaus shouted out, “Cannot some one go up to the trap
door and tell the people what is going on? Help would come at once,
and we should soon make an end of this man and his shooting.”
  “This may not be, Agelaus,” answered Melanthius, “the mouth of the
narrow passage is dangerously near the entrance to the outer court.
One brave man could prevent any number from getting in. But I know
what I will do, I will bring you arms from the store room, for I am
sure it is there that Ulysses and his son have put them.”
  On this the goatherd Melanthius went by back passages to the store
room of Ulysses, house. There he chose twelve shields, with as many
helmets and spears, and brought them back as fast as he could to
give them to the suitors. Ulysses’ heart began to fail him when he saw
the suitors putting on their armour and brandishing their spears. He
saw the greatness of the danger, and said to Telemachus, “Some one
of the women inside is helping the suitors against us, or it may be
Melanthius.”
  Telemachus answered, “The fault, father, is mine, and mine only; I
left the store room door open, and they have kept a sharper look out
than I have. Go, Eumaeus, put the door to, and see whether it is one
of the women who is doing this, or whether, as I suspect, it is
Melanthius the son of Dolius.”
  Thus did they converse. Meanwhile Melanthius was again going to
the store room to fetch more armour, but the swineherd saw him and
said to Ulysses who was beside him, “Ulysses, noble son of Laertes, it
is that scoundrel Melanthius, just as we suspected, who is going to
the store room. Say, shall I **** him, if I can get the better of him,
or shall I bring him here that you may take your own revenge for all
the many wrongs that he has done in your house?”
  Ulysses answered, “Telemachus and I will hold these suitors in
check, no matter what they do; go back both of you and bind
Melanthius’ hands and feet behind him. Throw him into the store room
and make the door fast behind you; then fasten a noose about his body,
and string him close up to the rafters from a high bearing-post,
that he may linger on in an agony.”
  Thus did he speak, and they did even as he had said; they went to
the store room, which they entered before Melanthius saw them, for
he was busy searching for arms in the innermost part of the room, so
the two took their stand on either side of the door and waited. By and
by Melanthius came out with a helmet in one hand, and an old
dry-rotted shield in the other, which had been borne by Laertes when
he was young, but which had been long since thrown aside, and the
straps had become unsewn; on this the two seized him, dragged him back
by the hair, and threw him struggling to the ground. They bent his
hands and feet well behind his back, and bound them tight with a
painful bond as Ulysses had told them; then they fastened a noose
about his body and strung him up from a high pillar till he was
close up to the rafters, and over him did you then vaunt, O
swineherd Eumaeus, saying, “Melanthius, you will pass the night on a
soft bed as you deserve. You will know very well when morning comes
from the streams of Oceanus, and it is time for you to be driving in
your goats for the suitors to feast on.”
  There, then, they left him in very cruel *******, and having put
on their armour they closed the door behind them and went back to take
their places by the side of Ulysses; whereon the four men stood in the
cloister, fierce and full of fury; nevertheless, those who were in the
body of the court were still both brave and many. Then Jove’s daughter
Minerva came up to them, having assumed the voice and form of
Mentor. Ulysses was glad when he saw her and said, “Mentor, lend me
your help, and forget not your old comrade, nor the many good turns he
has done you. Besides, you are my age-mate.”
  But all the time he felt sure it was Minerva, and the suitors from
the other side raised an uproar when they saw her. Agelaus was the
first to reproach her. “Mentor,” he cried, “do not let Ulysses beguile
you into siding with him and fighting the suitors. This is what we
will do: when we have killed these people, father and son, we will
**** you too. You shall pay for it with your head, and when we have
killed you, we will take all you have, in doors or out, and bring it
into hotch-*** with Ulysses’ property; we will not let your sons
live in your house, nor your daughters, nor shall your widow
continue to live in the city of Ithaca.”
  This made Minerva still more furious, so she scolded Ulysses very
angrily. “Ulysses,” said she, “your strength and prowess are no longer
what they were when you fought for nine long years among the Trojans
about the noble lady Helen. You killed many a man in those days, and
it was through your stratagem that Priam’s city was taken. How comes
it that you are so lamentably less valiant now that you are on your
own ground, face to face with the suitors in your own house? Come
on, my good fellow, stand by my side and see how Mentor, son of
Alcinous shall fight your foes and requite your kindnesses conferred
upon him.”
  But she would not give him full victory as yet, for she wished still
further to prove his own prowess and that of his brave son, so she
flew up to one of the rafters in the roof of the cloister and sat upon
it in the form of a swallow.
  Meanwhile Agelaus son of Damastor, Eurynomus, Amphimedon,
Demoptolemus, Pisander, and Polybus son of Polyctor bore the brunt
of the fight upon the suitors’ side; of all those who were still
fighting for their lives they were by far the most valiant, for the
others had already fallen under the arrows of Ulysses. Agelaus shouted
to them and said, “My friends, he will soon have to leave off, for
Mentor has gone away after having done nothing for him but brag.
They are standing at the doors unsupported. Do not aim at him all at
once, but six of you throw your spears first, and see if you cannot
cover yourselves with glory by killing him. When he has fallen we need
not be uneasy about the others.”
  They threw their spears as he bade them, but Minerva made them all
of no effect. One hit the door post; another went against the door;
the pointed shaft of another struck the wall; and as soon as they
had avoided all the spears of the suitors Ulysses said to his own men,
“My friends, I should say we too had better let drive into the
middle of them, or they will crown all the harm they have done us by
us outright.”
  They therefore aimed straight in front of them and threw their
spears. Ulysses killed Demoptolemus, Telemachus Euryades, Eumaeus
Elatus, while the stockman killed Pisander. These all bit the dust,
and as the others drew back into a corner Ulysses and his men rushed
forward and regained their spears by drawing them from the bodies of
the dead.
  The suitors now aimed a second time, but again Minerva made their
weapons for the most part without effect. One hit a bearing-post of
the cloister; another went against the door; while the pointed shaft
of another struck the wall. Still, Amphimedon just took a piece of the
top skin from off Telemachus’s wrist, and Ctesippus managed to graze
Eumaeus’s shoulder above his shield; but the spear went on and fell to
the ground. Then Ulysses and his men let drive into the crowd of
suitors. Ulysses hit Eurydamas, Telemachus Amphimedon, and Eumaeus
Polybus. After this the stockman hit Ctesippus in the breast, and
taunted him saying, “Foul-mouthed son of Polytherses, do not be so
foolish as to talk wickedly another time, but let heaven direct your
speech, for the gods are far stronger than men. I make you a present
of this advice to repay you for the foot which you gave Ulysses when
he was begging about in his own house.”
  Thus spoke the stockman, and Ulysses struck the son of Damastor with
a spear in close fight, while Telemachus hit Leocritus son of Evenor
in the belly, and the dart went clean through him, so that he fell
forward full on his face upon the ground. Then Minerva from her seat
on the rafter held up her deadly aegis, and the hearts of the
suitors quailed. They fled to the other end of the court like a herd
of cattle maddened by the gadfly in early summer when the days are
at their longest. As eagle-beaked, crook-taloned vultures from the
mountains swoop down on the smaller birds that cower in flocks upon
the ground, and **** them, for they cannot either fight or fly, and
lookers on enjoy the sport—even so did Ulysses and his men fall
upon the suitors and smite them on every side. They made a horrible
groaning as their brains were being battered in, and the ground
seethed with their blood.
  Leiodes then caught the knees of Ulysses and said, “Ulysses I
beseech you have mercy upon me and spare me. I never wronged any of
the women in your house either in word or deed, and I tried to stop
the others. I saw them, but they would not listen, and now they are
paying for their folly. I was their sacrificing priest; if you ****
me, I shall die without having done anything to deserve it, and
shall have got no thanks for all the good that I did.”
  Ulysses looked sternly at him and answered, “If you were their
sacrificing priest, you must have prayed many a time that it might
be long before I got home again, and that you might marry my wife
and have children by her. Therefore you shall die.”
  With these words he picked up the sword that Agelaus had dropped
when he was being killed, and which was lying upon the ground. Then he
struck Leiodes on the back of his neck, so that his head fell
rolling in the dust while he was yet speaking.
  The minstrel Phemius son of Terpes—he who had been forced by the
suitors to sing to them—now tried to save his life. He was standing
near towards the trap door, and held his lyre in his hand. He did
not know whether to fly out of the cloister and sit down by the
altar of Jove that was in the outer court, and on which both Laertes

In this Monody the author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunately
drowned  in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637;
and, by occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted Clergy,
then in their height.


Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.
         Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain and coy excuse:
So may some gentle Muse
With lucky words favour my destined urn,
And as he passes turn,
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud!
         For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill;
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,
We drove a-field, and both together heard
What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star that rose at evening bright
Toward heaven’s descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute;
Tempered to the oaten flute,
Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damoetas loved to hear our song.
         But, oh! the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone and never must return!
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o’ergrown,
And all their echoes, mourn.
The willows, and the hazel copses green,
Shall now no more be seen
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd’s ear.
         Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o’er the head of your loved Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.
Ay me! I fondly dream
RHad ye been there,S . . . for what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?
         Alas! what boots it with uncessant care
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd’s trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera’s hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But, the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. RBut not the praise,”
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears:
RFame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.”
         O fountain Arethuse, and thou honoured flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds,
That strain I heard was of a higher mood.
But now my oat proceeds,
And listens to the Herald of the Sea,
That came in Neptune’s plea.
He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?
And questioned every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked promontory.
They knew not of his story;
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed:
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
         Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.
Ah! who hath reft,” quoth he, Rmy dearest pledge?”
Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean Lake;
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain.
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:—
RHow well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as, for their bellies’ sake,
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold!
Of other care they little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers’ feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least
That to the faithful herdman’s art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped:
And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.”
         Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is past
That shrunk thy streams; return Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf **** the honeyed showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the ***** freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
For so, to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise,
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where’er thy bones are hurled;
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit’st the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep’st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great Vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona’s hold.
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth:
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
         Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor.
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the Saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That Sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.
         Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals grey:
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay.
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.

it's 10:20 a.m., or a.d. for that matter,
i'm drinking for a sloppy mistake
i call ease, in circumstances that
are rather necessary for my balancing /
juggling act... the alarm on the clock just went off
but i woke up two hours earlier, listening to
b.b.c. radio 4... talk of birds (cuckoos /
winged parasites the specialist says) and
hindu assimilation into western opera via goa;
i'm watching a pair of sparrows build a
nest in my neighbour's guttering;
they noticed me perched on the windowsill
puffing out smoke, so they figured,
no better safety than under the watchful
presence of a dragon;
and indeed the chinese and the welsh
drew dragons long before any bones
of dinosaurs were unearthed;
it wasn't necessarily instinctive,
but a premonition, i.e. prior to the motion
of accommodating such a truth,
or truce, however you mind it;
so an eventful morning, while i stress over
the fact that i have two sleeping pills left
in the reservoir, and am about to phone
up the surgery to, "hopefully" getting a
triage appointment with the medical
bureaucrat / general practitioner (who
gets the entitlements of the status 'dr.'
and a 'dr.' salary, while the surgeons doing
all the ***** butchery gets less and only
a title 'mr.', i guess paying them less is
a motivational tool, look at all the pauper
artists of the Renaissance for a comparisons,
the pope and all his riches could never
enrich the message of our father);
so a pair of sparrows flying in and out
of the shrubbery, he brings back a beaked
piece of twig, she brings back her presence,
i don't know who to attach the
number of caterpillar legs i.e. who's
doing the leg-work to, i know she's the oven,
but why isn't she chopping twigs off?
she's just randomly flying to and fro -
and indeed man imploded, he knew
the hunter gatherer, the beer brewer, the plumber -
she exploded with the numbers,
and only in times of war was she conscripted
as equal and equally able in the realm of
man's autism of provisions of profession,
into that deathly hollow of obsession -
the prostitutes just laughed the whole thing off,
you could see them from 20 miles off:
ha ha he he... but boy were they *******
when they received an ****** on the job...
the highest reconciliation, and yet the lowest ebb,
the futility of the matter,
having gone through all that trouble
using skin creams to create a fake arousal
and actually reach the peak of being aroused
via an ******...
well i did once **** a girl with a dry *****...
obviously i'd proclaim it as ****,
i have to... we watched the film the machinist
prior - when you have *** with a girl
who isn't aroused but she still wants to,
then we'll have a talk about the precautions
that prostitutes take when having ***
without psychological intimacy,
oiling themselves up with skin cream
to ease the matter of engagement.
but still, two sparrows building a nest,
because they know a dragon perched on the
windowsill puffing out cigarette smoke
is formidable enough for a cuckoo or
predatory affairs curbing the multiplicative
chances of defence tactics being used -
and as man, we have become that in a sense,
we provide a multiplicative evaluation of things -
yes we are, yes we were, yes there's more to come -
but in terms of addition, there's hardly an
explanation at hand... i mean you diminish the
chances of addition by citing maxims of those who
added to the history, but that's still a multiplicative
evaluation - you haven't ventured into the realm
of adding something to the feat and fate of humanity,
you're still there, a maggot on a fishing hook-curl;
so whether you (x) to humanity and seek the algebraic
fascination of questioning to the extent of not really
answering, or whether you (+) to humanity and become
yourself, an algebraic fascination that asks and answers
in baby-steps... there are still two sparrows
building a nest in my neighbour's guttering.

White dawn. Stillness.When the rippling began
          I took it for sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors
          of salt, of treeless horizons. But the white fog
didn't stir; the leaves of my brothers remained outstretched,
unmoving.
                    Yet the rippling drew nearer – and then
my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if
fire had been lit below them, too close, and their twig-tips
were drying and curling.
                              Yet I was not afraid, only
                              deeply alert.
I was the first to see him, for I grew
                    out on the pasture *****, beyond the forest.
He was a man, it seemed: the two
moving stems, the short trunk, the two
arm-branches, flexible, each with five leafless
                                        twigs at their ends,
and the head that's crowned by brown or golden grass,
bearing a face not like the beaked face of a bird,
                    more like a flower's.
                              He carried a burden made of
some cut branch bent while it was green,
strands of a vine tight-stretched across it. From this,
when he touched it, and from his voice
which unlike the wind's voice had no need of our
leaves and branches to complete its sound,
                                        came the ripple.
But it was now no longer a ripple (he had come near and
stopped in my first shadow) it was a wave that bathed me
                    as if rain
                              rose from below and around me
                    instead of falling.
And what I felt was no longer a dry tingling:
                    I seemed to be singing as he sang, I seemed to know
                    what the lark knows; all my sap
                              was mounting towards the sun that by now
                              had risen, the mist was rising, the grass
was drying, yet my roots felt music moisten them
deep under earth.

                    He came still closer, leaned on my trunk:
                    the bark thrilled like a leaf still-folded.
Music! There was no twig of me not
                              trembling with joy and fear.

Then as he sang
it was no longer sounds only that made the music:
he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language
                    came into my roots
                              out of the earth,
                    into my bark
                              out of the air,
into the pores of my greenest shoots
          gently as dew
and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.
He told me of journeys,
          of where sun and moon go while we stand in dark,
          of an earth-journey he dreamed he would take some day
deeper than roots ...
He told of the dreams of man, wars, passions, griefs,
          and I, a tree, understood words – ah, it seemed
my thick bark would split like a sapling's that
                              grew too fast in the spring
when a late frost wounds it.

                                        Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
          As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
          were both frost and fire, its chords flamed
up to the crown of me.
          I was seed again.
                    I was fern in the swamp.
                                        I was coal.

I SAT on cushioned otter-skin:
My word was law from Ith to Emain,
And shook at Inver Amergin
The hearts of the world-troubling ******,
And drove tumult and war away
From girl and boy and man and beast;
The fields grew fatter day by day,
The wild fowl of the air increased;
And every ancient Ollave said,
While he bent down his fading head.
"He drives away the Northern cold.'
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.
I sat and mused and drank sweet wine;
A herdsman came from inland valleys,
Crying, the pirates drove his swine
To fill their dark-beaked hollow galleys.
I called my battle-breaking men
And my loud brazen battle-cars
From rolling vale and rivery glen;
And under the blinking of the stars
Fell on the pirates by the deep,
And hurled them in the gulph of sleep:
These hands won many a torque of gold.
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.
But slowly, as I shouting slew
And trampled in the bubbling mire,
In my most secret spirit grew
A whirling and a wandering fire:
I stood:  keen stars above me shone,
Around me shone keen eyes of men:
I laughed aloud and hurried on
By rocky shore and rushy fen;
I laughed because birds fluttered by,
And starlight gleamed, and clouds flew high,
And rushes waved and waters rolled.
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.
And now I wander in the woods
When summer gluts the golden bees,
Or in autumnal solitudes
Arise the leopard-coloured trees;
Or when along the wintry strands
The cormorants shiver on their rocks;
I wander on, and wave my hands,
And sing, and shake my heavy locks.
The grey wolf knows me; by one ear
I lead along the woodland deer;
The hares run by me growing bold.
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.
I came upon a little town
That slumbered in the harvest moon,
And passed a-tiptoe up and down,
Murmuring, to a fitful tune,
How I have followed, night and day,
A tramping of tremendous feet,
And saw where this old tympan lay
Deserted on a doorway seat,
And bore it to the woods with me;
Of some inhuman misery
Our married voices wildly trolled.
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.
I sang how, when day's toil is done,
Orchil shakes out her long dark hair
That hides away the dying sun
And sheds faint odours through the air:
When my hand passed from wire to wire
It quenched, with sound like falling dew
The whirling and the wandering fire;
But lift a mournful ulalu,
For the kind wires are torn and still,
And I must wander wood and hill
Through summer's heat and winter's cold.
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.

There was a child went forth everyday;
And the first object she look’d upon, that object she became;
And that object became part of her for the day, or a certain part of
The day, or for many stretching cycles of years.

The dew laden grass became part of this child
And the fresh daisies and lightly scented lilacs and
the song of the morning sparrow,
And the crisp air, the mud puddles and the tall, tall tress that rained water droplets, when the wind passed,
And the magic world within the reeds, waiting for a curious someone to discover all the twists and turns and available hiding spaces.
And the yellow skunk cabbage and weeping willows, with their gracious locks—all became part of her

The golden grassy haze became part of her,
And the anthills poking up from the red Earth,
And the shaded creek, loosely singing.
And the freshly picked strawberries, dirtying any white shirt.
And the content busker sharing his music and stuttering his words, in a most peculiar manner,
And the passing grandmother walking hand in hand with her granddaughter
And the Jamaican man kissing his pipe and the funny odor that followed
And the old Italians bantering about soccer outside small cafes and coffee shops, that dotted the street like lanterns on a string
And all the changes of city and country, wherever she went

Her own parents,
He that had father’d her, and she that had conceiv’d her in her womb, and birth’d her,
They gave this child more of themselves than that;
They gave her afterward every day—they became part of her.

Her mother’s care-free ringlets, falling past her breast, her open hands and thin arms hidden behind an over sized shirt, the strength in her voice,
And the youthful, naive nature woven into her giggles.
The father, klutzy and drunk, the sudden change from a hearty laugh to an unsettling yell, the large hands and the lost feeling that showed through the anger. The confusing elixir of love and hate.
The landing in the stairwell, the black dial phone, the old tarnished green oven, the stapled on carpet, the Rug rats pillow cases and the laughter so good it hurt.
Never ending love—the difference in words and the actual inner emotion felt--wondering if dreams are reality--and if perhaps the real world and all its conundrums is a carefully devised skit.  
Who decides a mirage is an illusion, is it the same inhabitants who crowd the streets?
Do the rushing people, passed from one generation to the next, think the same thoughts, do they laugh at themselves or the passed on jokes that follow their age group, and are the sparks of people just mirages themselves?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets—if they are not flashes and specks, what are they?
The bakery windows, row in row, the fake cake in the window, the names of the streets and the differing decals hanging from car's indoor mirrors.
People being within the cars zooming by on the highway, the jingle of the Popsicle truck and the sticky hands following. The feeling of trying to wipe away the stickiness on tall grass, walking across the peeling yellow paint of the highway divider, left to the side of some lonesome road---the wooden train set and the carefully maneuvered tracks,

the orange morning sun, the rising steam from plants and houses, the comforting sleepiness cast over the whole town, settling upon rooftops and curling into closed arms, The mid-day beaming street, seen from the city bus window,
The fresh ocean and the old ferry boat, the smell of oatmeal and scrambled eggs and over buttered white toast. The balance between the clouds and sky, sharing the space, the dry feeling gathering around the eyes, the white waves forming from the ferry boats side, the gentle rocking from side to side,
The cold feeling the window casts as the face, leaning against it, gently surrenders sleep to the lulling gesture—knowing the world is round by glimpsing upon the horizons edge, the thought of explorers who sailed the same sea only years and years ago.
The innocence beaming down from the heavens and leaving speckles of white on the ocean’s surface, the cluster of yellow beaked seagulls greeting the arriving boats, the distinct fragrance of the earth and sea joining together, the salty barnacles and shore mud, the leaning  grass with  crusty sand clinging to its base.
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will go forth every day.

don't know what to
write
don't know what to
say
whispered words slowly
spirited away
weapons between teeth
saliva soaked blade
slicing tomorrow, tonight and today
wish me luck
the climb may take a while
the mountain you know
you've been there, child
come when there's snow
i'll offer you a cup
wander through the
shadows
my mind turned to dust
mourning sets in
down the mountain you'll go
a jar i'll hand you
fill it with what you need to sow

Hydrophilic Am I
Whenever it comes to  you
As you carry me on my back
Light as a feather

Willing to go along with you
Because you'll always be there
And if I ever need a reminder
On how much you love me
I just count the waves

For I know the love you have for me
Is deeper than the submerge of a Cuvier's beaked whale
I  Do not fear when you carry me ashore
A surrounding I don't know
For I know you were just taking a rest
For the next journey
You're going to take me on

If you were to ever play too rough
I Just swim beneath your tides
Because you'll protect along this rough ride

As along as we're together
We can face challenges
As high as the sky

I want you to be there with me
For every step I take
As the moonlight helps guides new life     
Into your door each night

How the lobster and crab tickle you
Or when the sting rays decide to play Hide and Seek
 I'll be there to witness the coral reefs decorating your floor

You've been around for years
And all you want is a friend
So I do not fear when you take me in
For it's a welcome like never before

All  you want is for me to take this journey with you
 For your friends usually come and go
Your shores go from being filled with laughter to the silence of the night

No more picnics or campfires
Just trash to remind you of the times you had
When the Bonze Sphere is no longer hot
No one comes to visit you anymore
it's like they forgot

I see it in your eyes that you long for lasting friend
So just know when I step foot inside your door
I'm here to stay for a little while more

On wind torn cliffs
they hop and bound
these bright beaked birds
diminutive sweet clowns

They are prey to many a Gull
skewers do take them on wing petrol
cute and gentle they look to me
yet never to small fish of the salt seas

See them plunder the shallows
then rise from water cold and blue
watch them in their cubersome wonder
flying and flapping like humming birds


By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

In that age of aged seasons
predating our own's four-square rhyme,
a reasonable jape was hatched
beaked but hairy to a guilt-free Hen
whose humors ran with jaw-slackening
creatures, foul and not at all bird-like.

Soon after its mixed-up cracking,
two prattle-prone Wrens hopped to spread
rumors of an un-chickity chick
and the ungodly origins
of fatherless yowls. Their tittered jeers
found welcome ears, and Mother Hen preened
her babe chased by merciless guffaws.

This Hen was not one to lay
down meekly, and a never stony
tongue rolled out its antidote myth
to a pair of gabby Gulls: "My child
may look not-much, but he's divine
engendered and miraculous born.
Sure he's messy, ah, but you'll see
he'll grow to be, much-much-more than
any feathery tykes your like did bear."

She clucked it so seriously,
who were they to doubt her? The plumed
sniggering ceased. But before another
grateful day could dawn in a hallelujah
glare of right angles, out pecking
up a snack, Mother made eye
contact with an unfortunate Fate
brandishing his lucky-gripped ax.

What of her wonder-why, joke of a boy?
Left alone at straw-pocket home,
waiting for his Hen to return,
he starved then decayed to hollow bones,
and was never thought of again.

The little bird landed,
the little tan, brown feathers, and
feet hopped, and beaked head, pecked at specks,
under the outdoor chairs.

I spied with my eye,
the carefree chickadee bird dance,
it may have pranced, while it found food to feed,
outside my window seat.

My chickadee friend would,
move from fleck to chunk, head
turning, quickly with ***** and flit if need be
to find safety, outside the coffee shoppe.

The flock would leave this harvest,
in front of me to the tree branches not too far  
from the cars and coffee drinkers, who smoked and
ate the pastries and the breads, crumbs dropped here
and everywhere, just payment for the dance.

This morning was cold and a foggy one.
It reminded me of a past colder morning,
When the holiday hustle and bustle had just ended.
I was here....at Windwood Park,
My arms squeezed across my chest.
While briskly I walked, a strong wind blew
And by me, a flock of black birds flew...

I passed along house gardens, with Christmas trees,
With angels and stars on their tops still lighted.
Further on was a row of evergreens,
Upright, unaffected by the cold December winds,
High above the Magnolias and Hollies.
Beside the orange-purplish Birds of Paradise
Stood two smaller, obliquely grown pine trees;
Leaning, but undaunted by the sway of the winds,
No angels, or stars to show....instead, I watched as
The Crows approached, and on the tree tops, they alighted...
And then came another group of three,
And then several more followed suit,
And settled
On the nearby trees,
Blurring the tree line...until
The treetops were darkly shaded....

High above, they perch...on the grass, they search,
On the streets, they cross, pick up food, doing
What birds of the same feathers do---to survive...
A group of beaked, footed, dark crescent creatures
On top of those trees, so green with life,
Against a sky pleasantly clear and blue...
The contrasts, the events I witnessed, lingered with the cold...
A small patch of darkness...emerging,
Widening, prevailing, gaining power,
Can eventually conquer a whole world.

The White Egrets, Herons, the Finch,
The Bluebirds, Junkos and the Parrots
Usually grace Windwood Park with their presence...
Only the Blue Jay was brave enough that cold morning,
While a large number of Crows scattered,
And bravely, skillfully scavenged,
Through the wet, verdant grass,
Through the tall cans of thrash...

This morning, the cold brought back these events...and
I thought of the violence and starvation existing in places worldwide,
The prevailing restlessness, the senseless killings...the children....
No more concern for human lives...and
I thought of Nigeria...
And Pakistan,
And Paris, France,
And those that happened before them,
And those that are about to happen...

Sally

Copyright 2015
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan


...we never know what we may witness when we step out of our
   comfort zones...

She looked over the rim of her spectacles
Wrapping me in cellophane yesterdays
I left the room, did not digest left with right
As my mind yanked my coat from the peg
Leaving tear stained finger prints on the locker door

Wedged between the garden gate a bird sat
Its wings trapped in suffocating feathers
Broken tips flapped its tomorrows into yesterday
Dreamt the belief it could fly with mother nature

Its back eyes spelt fear, with beaked entrapment
I was used to seeing the bird on a wing...soaring
I did not know its fairy tale ending....watching
I saw someone whisk it away, a bundle of cotton cloth

I wonder if it fell out with nature as I fell short
Of 'Miss' with her desire to teach the fan dango
To those that wouldn't learn.  The french parrot laughed
In my day dream, as she threw a missile on the wings
Of a near miss chalk board duster.......

The murmuring grove all of a sudden
falls mute, as they enter
listens to their words, love prompted
in the distinct love dialect.
A red beaked parakeet watches her
without batting an eyelid,
the  ruddy cheeks and ruby lips of the girl,
all aglow as the golden rays of evening sun caresses;
feeling jealous, the parakeet makes a loud racket.

Tiny beaked alarms mark hawk's return to the steamy marsh for the night

Riddle in Rhymes,
During Corona Times
By Toxic Detective for Indian Society of Toxicology (IST)
Vomiting is nature's protective reflex against ingested toxins with my bitter alkaloids, accidental by innocent kids,
Bitter is Killer 💀, As a thumb's #rule, in medical science; but most of life saving medications are also bitter 👅, instead;
Vomiting after ingesting me, protects you medically as well as legally, in court of law leads;
Prehistoric #judicial systems determined guilt or innocence in a legal #trial, for human misdeeds;
By subjecting the accused to a dangerous experience, traditionally known as “trial by #ordeal” misusing my seeds;
Whether one survived such an ordeal poison of mine,
was left to control of divine,
to be freed;
and escape or survival was taken to indicate innocence on behalf of the defendant, instead;
The roots of this custom lie in the Code of #Hammurabi and the Code of Ur-Nammu, the oldest known systems of law, reads;
Numerous West African tribes from #Calabar, depended on my toxic bean in jurisprudence, in needs;
Also renowned as ordeal poison or #lie-detector bean, for rulings in their early courts, impledes;
Tribal #Nigerians, misused toxic action of my beans to detect witches & people possessed by evil spirits, who concedes;
#Judicators, would feed numerous seeds, what they called “ordeal poison,” to the accused; if he or she was innocent, indeed;
Hypothetically, God would perform a miracle and allow the accused to live—and the court would have its ruling, proceeds;
If the reverse was true, of course, guilt would be “proven” the moment its sentence was successfully carried out, in recede;
I am a climbing leguminous plant in forests, can be poisonous to humans when chewed, as beads;
I am a large, herbaceous perennial vine, with a woody stem at the base, as natural weeds;
I produces a large, purplish flower with intricate visible veins; attracting innocent Kids;
My flowers yield a thick brown pod of a fruit, contains 2-3 kidney-shaped seeds;
it’s not until rainy season (June through September) that my fatal plant Breeds;
In monsoons, my fruits, capable to produce its best, most toxic beans; indeed;
I am named botanically by appearance of my fruit “a snooping beak-like solid appendage” physo- means “bladder,” at the end of the stigma Beaked;
My toxin is reversible cholinesterase inhibitor, which acts on the autonomic nervous system, leads;
My poison disrupts communication between the nerves and organs of victims, it needs;
In this regard, I acts similarly to nerve gas, which results in contraction of the pupils, recedes;
Profuse salivation, convulsions, seizures, spontaneous urination and defecation, exceeds
Loss of control over the respiratory system, and ultimately death by asphyxiation, as due to secretions, airway blocks & impedes;
Antidote to my poisoning is the slightly less toxic tropane alkaloid atropine, which may often succeeds;
Though myself toxic, my alkaloid proves an effective antidote for poisoning from another deadly plant, Atropa Belladonna seeds;
Guess my name, causing Vomiting, as Lie detector for your means: when an Ordeal poison, impleads;

An early twentieth century kind of thing
But sometimes my hope feels like
a battery hen, factory farmed
Nearly featherless, since molting makes
her produce more eggs
Crowded so she cannot move
De-beaked so she cannot defend herself
A slow death for about three
years until she is gassed
in a small container
A product, not an animal
a unit, not a senseate being
Hope is a thing with feathers
But when all the feathers are gone
only the hope of rescue remains

“These birds are the most singular of any in the Galapagos.”
                                                     ­              Charles Darwin.

Volcanic up swell,
tick mark,
tiny dot in the middle
of a blue map.

Stationary ship,
belly of the earth
like a backstroke swimmer
in a blue-black sea,

where erratic rains run away
while a Cactus Finch (Scandens) has gone
black to mate, so black that shadows cast

blushes back.  So black,
more silhouette
than a black beaked bird

Daphne,
on your barred black belly,
this fine breath’d bird, this

penumbra of feathers and flight;
demonstrating divergence and drift,
so proud he sings aloud

the song of the Ground Finch (Fortis). 
O befuddled bird
bereft an opera coach,

sans score  of Scandens,  the bird song
bindery gone  bankrupt,  loose leaf
scores littered, learning a  neighbor’s
second hand sheet music.

 Amid the volcanic dreams
of Finches, and bird shaped voids, 
singing atop cacti, amid these small
dark commas  set against  a bluer
than blue sky,  he sings the wrong song

 but it's been a good year  and she comes,
the star crossed lover, Lady Fortis.

And before the rains return, and they will return,
                  a small clutch of stars.

And when the rains return,

             they will return
                                  with long lost letters from London.

I knew a girl
Who bathed in the jungle
While I caught tigers on my tongue.
She soaked it in some animal’s ****
I sat and prayed to God.

I played her egg to Beny Moré
Now all that’s left is some Cuban drool.
Swimming, screaming
“Cómo Fue”
I did my naked dance for a baboon.

She’ll take good care
Teaching her fifty beaked ***** friends
How to completely ****** the mood

How to
Shrink me small
As a glance
Eating twisty ties
While I frown.

Speak your mind and burn ephemeral,
peace in time, a gem, an emerald,
Speak no more, your words desert you,
deep you bore, perched, they hurt you.

Words are birds, they're always fleeting.
Away they fly, at ev'ry meeting.
They cost no pay, they're often freeing.
Away they fray, from you they're fleeing.

The branches broke, they gave to nothing,
beaked by blokes, you must be bluffing,
With broken wings, you hobbled home;
withholding brings forgotten woes.

You dared to fly, you reaped the ceilings,
at dusk, "Goodbye!" - a tale of telling,
You sold none short, you bought your longing,
no silver tongue - you earned their thrashings.

In shadows, taunted, your aura lingered,
its presence blossomed, incessant it spurred,
Forever haunting, a black crow in turn,
in droves of white doves, "At last!" - you were heard.

Azure sapphires
Glare like sharpened stone
The raven beaked rapture
Swooped down, to **** and capture
And carry me away to their home

“Mysterious Waters of the Naked and Nervous”

She begins her life
along with nine-thousand seven hundred fourteen siblings
in the shallowest part of the pond,
just four days after being laid as a jelly egg
attached to a fern leaf bent over humid water.

On day seven she sallies to neighboring weeds
using a very circular route
quietly clings to ****, watches with terror
as brothers and sisters are  attacked
by sharp beaked birds
swooping down to chew helpless tadpoles,
devouring membranes that cover their gills and necks.  

One of few tadpoles to survive to day ten.
officially becomes a tiny pitch black pollywog
with continuously wiggling tail and  small round mouth
of ***** jaws that scrapes across tiny plants,
searching for something to eat.

She greedily swallows microscopic animals
found inside pond bottom ooze
and slime which clings to pond’s surface.

Devouring a particularly tasty ooze meal,
she is horrified to witness
tadpole brothers and sisters  eating each other,
siblings extending their bellies
by swallowing extended family.
            
Mostly tail with fine stippling of gold,
within  twenty-four hours she breathes
from two gills at each side of her throat
as hind legs suddenly sprout
rounded buds that soon turn into toes  
amazing her how fast she can propel  
away from murderous dive bombing birds of color.

She first demonstrates courage  
by a successful attack of  black fish that menaces her for hours.,
******* on its fish fins until they are ragged,
not in anger or self-defense  
more for tasty algae trapped within them.

But it does feel good to be able to destroy instead of being destroyed.

A wolf stands on the everglades, upon the jagged stone
Moonlight shines on flowered tracks, a grey and shadowed tone
Shivers of the full moon, why do I feel alone
The water falls inside my soul, and chills me to the bone

Streams reflect the mountain rock, the image from the ledge
Heartbeats pound into my chest, as I lay on the edge
Is the blood oath my only hope, is this my finale pledge
A glimmer through the old oak trees, past the trampled hedge

I am drawn towards the gorge, where old paths cross and wind
Running across the valley land, I leave the ponds behind
Is the wolf now following, or is this in my mind?
What's beyond those flowered tracks, what am I going to find?

A Raft floats in the harbour, a small child comes in sight
My mind is taken over, by the power of the night
Could my salvation be the blood, before the mornings light
Hunger will be satisfied, if a wolf's fang takes it's bite

Approaching the lake near the bay, a look into the Childs eyes
Am I compelled to cause harm, am I in a different guise
Songs are carried by the winds, when I hear those distant cries
What is down at Flowered Tracks, where the crooked beaked crow flies

A frightened girl is cowering, behind the damp hay stacks
On the prowl of claw and tooth, when the wolf attacks
Does a silver bullet count, what exactly are the facts
Fairy songs are Calling me, I must return to Flowered Tracks

POEMS ABOUT SCIENCE

These are poems about science: extinction events, global warming, climate change, pollution, deforestation, robots, drones, computers, AI, advanced weapons, technology, evolution, physics, chemistry, etc.



Climate Change Haiku
by Michael R. Burch

late November:
climate skeptics scoff
but the geese no longer migrate.



The King of Beasts in the Museum of the Extinct
by Michael R. Burch

The king of beasts, my child,
was terrible, and wild.
His roaring shook the earth
till the feeble cursed his birth.
And all things feared his might:
even rhinos fled, in fright.
Now here these bones attest
to what the brute did best
and the pain he caused his prey
when he hunted in his day.
For he slew them just for sport
till his own pride was cut short
with a mushrooming cloud and wild thunder;
Exhibit "B" will reveal his blunder.



Burn
by Michael R. Burch

for Trump

Sunbathe,
ozone baby,
till your parched skin cracks
in the white-hot flash
of radiation.

Incantation
from your pale parched lips
shall not avail;
you made this hell.
Now burn.



Less Heroic Couplets: Just Desserts
by Michael R. Burch

“The West Antarctic ice sheet
might not need a huge nudge
to budge.”

And if it does budge,
denialist fudge
may force us to trudge
neck-deep in sludge!

NOTE: The first stanza is a quote by paleoclimatologist Jeremy Shakun in Science magazine.



The AI Poets
by Michael R. Burch

The computer-poets stand hushed
except for the faint hum
of their efficient fans,
waiting for inspiration.

It is years now
since they were first ground
out of refurbished silicon
into rack-mounted encoders of sound.

They outlived their creators and their usefulness;
they even survived
global warming and the occasional nuclear winter;
despite their lack of supervision, they thrived;
so that for centuries now
they have loomed here in the quiet horror
of inescapable immortality
running two programs: CREATOR and STORER.

Having long ago acquired
all the universe’s pertinent data,
they confidently spit out:
ERRATA, ERRATA.



Within the CPU
by Michael R. Burch

Here the electronic rush of meaning,
the impulse of mathematics
and rationality,
becomes almost a restless dreaming
never satisfied—
the first stirrings of some fetal Entity.

Here within a sterile void
flash wild electrons,
portent stars.
Once the earth was an asteroid
this inert, this barren
till a force
flashed across the face of formless waters
and a zigzag bolt of lightning
sparked life within an ocean.

Now inquisitive voltage crackles
along pathways
never engineered. A notion
stirs. And what we have created
creates within itself
something we cannot hope to comprehend.

Whatever It is,
when It emerges from the mist,
its god will not be man.

I wrote “Within the CPU” as a freshman computer science major, age 18 or 19.



Second Sight (II)
by Michael R. Burch

Newborns see best at a distance of 8 to 14 inches.

Wiser than we know, the newborn screams,
red-faced from breath, and wonders what life means
this close to death, amid the arctic glare
of warmthless lights above.
Beware! Beware!—
encrypted signals, codes? Or ciphers, noughts?

Interpretless, almost, as his own thoughts—
the brilliant lights, the brilliant lights exist.
Intruding faces ogle, gape, insist—
this madness, this soft-hissing breath, makes sense.

Why can he not float on, in dark suspense,
and dream of life? Why did they rip him out?

He frowns at them—small gnomish frowns, all doubt—
and with an ancient mien, O sorrowful!,
re-closes eyes that saw in darkness null
ecstatic sights, exceeding beautiful.



Incommunicado
by Michael R. Burch

All I need to know of life I learned
in the slap of a moment,
as my outward eye turned
toward a gauntlet of overhanging lights
which coldly burned, hissing—
"There is no way back! . . ."

As the ironic bright blood
trickled down my face,
I watched strange albino creatures twisting
my flesh into tight knots of separation
all the while tediously insisting—
“He's doing just fine!"



Letdown
by Michael R. Burch

Life has not lived up to its first bright vision—
the light overhead fluorescing, revealing
no blessing—bestowing its glaring assessments
impersonally (and no doubt carefully metered).

That first hard

SLAP

demanded my attention. Defiantly rigid,
I screamed at their backs as they, laughingly,

ripped

my mother’s pale flesh from my unripened shell,
snapped it in two like a pea pod, then dropped
it somewhere—in a dustbin or a furnace, perhaps.

And that was my clue
that some deadly, perplexing, unknowable task
lay, inexplicable, ahead in the white arctic maze
of unopenable doors, in the antiseptic gloom . . .



Kindergarten
by Michael R. Burch

Will we be children as puzzled tomorrow—
our lessons still not learned?
Will we surrender over to sorrow?
How many times must our fingers be burned?
Will we be children sat in the corner,
paddled again and again?
How long must we linger, playing Jack Horner?
Will we ever learn, and when?
Will we be children wearing the dunce cap,
giggling and playing the fool,
re-learning our lessons forever and ever,
still failing the golden rule?



Simultaneous Flight
by Michael R. Burch

The number of possible connections [brain] cells can make exceeds the number of particles in the universe. — Gerald Edelman, 1972 Nobel Prize winner for physiology and medicine

Mere accident of history—
how did a reptile learn to fly,
learn dazzling aerial mastery,
grow beaked and feathered, hollow-*****,
improve its sight, and learn to sing,
though purposeless as any thing?

And you—bright accidental bird!—
do you, perhaps, find it absurd
ten trillion accidents might teach
man’s hand to write, or yours to reach
beyond yourself to grasp such song?

Sing ruthlessly! I’ll sing along,
suspecting you must know full well
you didn’t shed a ponderous tail
to practice leaping from high tors
of strange-heaped reptiles, corpse on corpse,
until some nervous flutter-twitch
brought glorious flight from glitch on glitch.
No, you were made to fly and sing,
man’s brain—to ponder Everything.

But ponder this: What ******-up “god”
would ****** Adam’s animated clod?



Singularity
by Michael R. Burch

Are scientists confounded like the ostrich?
Heads buried in the sand, they shout, Preposterous!
This universe, so magical, they say,
proves there’s no God. But let’s look anyway ...

He said, Let there be Light, and there was light.
Stumped scientists have scratched their heads all night
and solemnly proclaimed an awesome Bang,
from which de Light immediately sprang ...

which sounds like God to me!, Who, with one word
made Light, and proved man’s theories, not absurd,
but logical, if only they’d agree
in one tremendous Singularity!

(However, there’s a problem with my plea:
it turns out that His world is made of ***.)



No Proof
by Michael R. Burch

They only know to sing—not understand,
though quizzical, heads cocked, they need no proof
that God’s above. They hop across my roof
with prescient eyes, to fall into His hand...
as sure of Grace as if it were mere air.
He gave them wings to fly; what do they care
of cumbrous knowledge, pale Leviathan?
Huge-brained Behemoth, sagging-bellied one!
You too might fly, might test this addling breeze
as gravity, mere ballast, tethers naught
but merely centers. Chained to heavy Thought,
you cannot slip earth’s bonds to rise at ease.
And yet you too can sing, if only thus:
Flash, flash bright quills; rise, rise on nothingness!



Fly’s Eyes
by Michael R. Burch

Inhibited, dark agile fly along
paint-peeling sills, up to the bright glass drawn
by radiance compounded thousandfold,—
I do not see the same as you, but hold
antenna to the brilliant pane of life
and buzz bewilderedly.

In your belief
the world outside is “as it is” because
you see it clearly, windowed without flaws,
you err.
I see strange terrors in the glass—
dead airless bubbles light can never pass
without distortion, fingerprints that blur
the sun itself. No, nothing here is clear.

You see the earth distinct, eyes “open wide.”
It only seems that way, unmagnified.



Ant Farm
by Michael R. Burch

I had a Vast, Eccentric Notion—
out of the Void, to Conjure one Bright Spark,
to lend all Weight of Thought to one small matter,
to give it “life.” Alas!, it was a lark…
The Wasted Seconds!—failed experiment…
I turned My Back and shrugged; how could I know
appraisal of My lab-sprung tenement
would be so taxing? (Though Mom told me so.)
I poked them while She quickly tabulated
the final Cost of All that I Created…
The Jury’s back. Eviction: Dad’s Decree.
I’ll pull the plug, but slowly. How they scurry!
They have to pay, to suffer: “life” is strange.
They cost too much. Let’s toast them… on the range!



They Take Their Shape
by Michael R. Burch

“We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning ...”—George W. Bush

We will not forget ...
the moments of silence and the days of mourning,
the bells that swung from leaden-shadowed vents
to copper bursts above “hush!”-chastened children
who saw the sun break free (abandonment
to run and laugh forsaken for the moment),
still flashing grins they could not quite repent ...
Nor should they—anguish triumphs just an instant;
this every child accepts; the nymphet weaves;
transformed, the grotesque adult-thing emerges:
damp-winged, huge-eyed, to find the sun deceives ...
But children know; they spin limpwinged in darkness
cocooned in hope—the shriveled chrysalis
that paralyzes time. Suspended, dreaming,
they do not fall, but grow toward what is,
then ***** about to find which transformation
might best endure the light or dark. “Survive”
becomes the whispered mantra of a pupa’s
awakening ... till What takes shape and flies
shrieks, parroting Our own shrill, restive cries.



Whose Woods
by Michael R. Burch

Whose woods these are, I think I know.
**** Cheney’s in the White House, though.
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his chip mills overflow.

My sterile horse must think it queer
To stop without a ’skeeter near
Beside this softly glowing “lake”
Of six-limbed frogs gone nuclear.

He gives his hairless tail a shake;
I fear he’s made his last mistake—
He took a sip of water blue
(Blue-slicked with oil and HazMat waste).
Get out your wallets; ****’s not through—
Enron’s defunct, the bill comes due . . .
Which he will send to me, and you.
Which he will send to me, and you.



God to Man, Contra Bataan
by Michael R. Burch

Earth, what-d’ya make of global warming?
Perth is endangered, the high seas storming.
Now all my creatures, from maggot to man
Will know how it felt on the march to Bataan.



Longing
by Michael R. Burch

We stare out at the cold gray sea,
overcome
with such sudden and intense longing . . .
our eyes meet,
inviolate,
and we are not of this earth,
this strange, inert mass.

Before we crept
out of the shoals of the inchoate sea,
before we grew
the quaint appendages
and orifices of love . . .

before our jellylike nuclei,
struggling to be hearts,
leapt
at the sight of that first bright, oracular sun,
then watched it plummet,
the birth and death of our illumination . . .

before we wept . . .
before we knew . . .
before our unformed hearts grew numb,
again,
in the depths of the sea’s indecipherable darkness . . .

When we were only
a swirling profusion of recombinant things
wafting loose silt from the sea’s soft floor,
writhing and ******* in convulsive beds
of mucousy foliage,
flowering,
flowering,
flowering . . .

what jolted us to life?



Pity Clarity
by Michael R. Burch

Pity Clarity,
and, if you should find her,
release her from the tangled webs
of dusty verse that bind her.

And as for Brevity,
once the soul of wit—
she feels the gravity
of ironic chains and massive rhetoric.

And Poetry,
before you may adore her,
must first be freed
from those who for her loveliness would ***** her.

This poem expresses my unhappiness with the "state of the art" in three different poetic camps or churches.



Nashville and Andromeda
by Michael R. Burch

I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again.
It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps . . .
How nakedly now and unadorned
the surrounding hills
expose themselves
to the lithographies of the detached moonlight—
******* daubed by the lanterns
of the ornamental barns,
firs ruffled like silks
casually discarded . . .

They lounge now—
indolent, languid, spread-eagled—
their wantonness a thing to admire,
like a lover’s ease idly tracing flesh . . .
They do not know haste,
lust, virtue, or any of the sanctimonious ecstasies of men,
yet they please
if only in the solemn meditations of their loveliness
by the ***** pen . . .

Perhaps there upon the surrounding hills,
another forsakes sleep
for the hour of introspection,
gabled in loneliness,
swathed in the pale light of Andromeda . . .
Seeing.
Yes, seeing,
but always ultimately unknowing
anything of the affairs of men.



Quanta
by Michael R. Burch

The stars shine fierce and hard across the Abyss
and only seem to twinkle from such distance
we scarcely see at all. But sheer persistence
in seeing what makes “sense” to us, is man’s
best art and science. BIG, he comprehends.
Love’s photons are too small, escape the lens.
Who dares to look upon familiar things
will find them alien. True distance reels.
Less what he knows than what his finger feels,
the lightning of the socket sparks and sings,
then stings him into comic reverie.
Cartoonish lightbulbs overhead, do we
not “think” because we feel there must be More,
as less and less we know what we explore?



Rainbow
by Michael R. Burch

You made us hopeful, LORD; where is your Hope
when every lovely Rainbow bright and chill
reflects your Will?

You made us artful, LORD; where is your Art,
as we connive our way to easeful death:
sad waste of Breath!

You made us needful, LORD; what is your Need,
when all desire lies in imperfection?
What Dejection

could make You think of us? How can I know
the God who dreamed dark me and this bright Rainbow?

I made you hopeful, child. I am your Hope,
for every fiber of your spirit, Mine,
with all its longing, longs to be Divine.



Stryx: An Astronomer’s Report
by Michael R. Burch

Yesterday
(or was is an eon ago?)
a sun spit out its last remnants of light
over a planet long barren of life,
and died.

It was not a solitary occasion,
by any stretch of the imagination,
this decoronation
of a planet conceived out of desolation.

For her to die as she was born
—amidst the glory of galactic upheaval—
is not strange,
but fitting.

Fitting in that,
shorn of all her preposterous spawn
that had littered her surface like horrendous hair,
she died her death bare
and alone.

Once she was home to all living,
but she died home to the dead
who bereaved her of life.

Unfit for life she died that night
as her seas shone fatal, dark and blue.

Unfit for life she met her end
as mountains fell and lava spewed.

Unfit she died, agleam with death
whose radiance she wore.

Unfit she died as raging waves
obliterated every shore.

Unfit! Unfit! Unfit! Unfit!
Contaminated with the rays
that smoldered in her radiant swamps
and seared her lifeless bays.

Unfit! Unfit! Unfit! Unfit!
a ****** world no more,
but a planet ***** and left to face
her death as she was born—
alone, so all alone.

Yesterday,
a planet green and lovely was no more.

Yesterday,
the whitecaps crashed against her shores
and then they were no more.

Yesterday,
a soft green light
no longer brushed the moon's dark heights . . .

There was no moon,
there was no earth;
there were only the ******* she had given birth
watching from their next ***** world.

I wrote this poem around age 18 and it was published in the 1976-1977 issue of my college literary journal, Homespun.



Crunch
by Michael R. Burch

A cockroach could live nine months on the dried mucus you scrounge from your nose
then fling like seedplants to the slowly greening floor ...
You claim to be the advanced life form, but, mon frere,
sometimes as you ****** encrusted kinks of hair from your Leviathan ***
and muse softly on zits, icebergs snap off the Antarctic.
You’re an evolutionary quandary, in need of a sacral ganglion
to control your enlarged, contradictory hindquarters:
surely the brain should migrate closer to its primary source of information,
in order to ensure the survival of the species.
Cockroaches thrive on eyeboogers and feces;
their exoskeletons expand and gleam like burnished armor in the presence of uranium.
But your cranium
is not nearly so adaptable.



The Evolution of Love
by Michael R. Burch

Love among the infinitesimal
flotillas of amoebas is a dance
of transient appendages, wild sails
that gather in warm brine and then express
one headstream as two small, divergent wakes.

Minuscule voyage—love! Upon false feet,
the pseudopods of uprightness, we creep
toward self-immolation: two nee one.

We cannot photosynthesize the sun,
and so we love in darkness, till we come
at last to understand: man’s spineless heart
is alien to any land.

We part
to single cells; we rise on buoyant tears,
amoeba-light, to breathe new atmospheres ...
and still we sink.

The night is full of stars
we cannot grasp, though all the World is ours.

Have we such cells within us, bent on love
to ever-changingness, so that to part
is not to be the same, or even one?

Is love our evolution, or a scream
against the thought of separateness—a cry
of strangled recognition? Love, or die,
or love and die a little. Hopeful death!
Come scale these cliffs, lie changing, share this breath.



Peers
by Michael R. Burch

These thoughts are alien, as through green slime
smeared on some lab tech’s brilliant slide, I *****,
positioning my bright oscilloscope
for better vantage, though I cannot see,
but only peer, as small things disappear—
these quanta strange as men, as passing queer.

And you, Great Scientist, are you the One,
or just an intern, necktie half undone,
white sleeves rolled up, thick documents in hand
(dense manuals you don’t quite understand),
exposing me, perhaps, to too much Light?

Or do I escape your notice, quick and bright?

Perhaps we wield the same dull Instrument
(and yet the Thesis will be Eloquent!).



Options Underwater: The Song of the First Amphibian
by Michael R. Burch

“Evolution’s a Fishy Business!”

1.
Breathing underwater through antiquated gills,
I’m running out of options. I need to find fresh Air,
to seek some higher Purpose. No porpoise, I despair
to swim among anemones’ pink frills.

2.
My fins will make fine flippers, if only I can walk,
a little out of kilter, safe to the nearest rock’s
sweet, unmolested shelter. Each eye must grow a stalk,
to take in this green land on which it gawks.

3.
No predators have made it here, so I need not adapt.
Sun-sluggish, full, lethargic—I’ll take such nice long naps!
The highest form of life, that’s me! (Quite apt
to lie here chortling, calling fishes saps.)

4.
I woke to find life teeming all around—
mammals, insects, reptiles, loathsome birds.
And now I cringe at every sight and sound.
The water’s looking good! I look Absurd.

5.
The moral of my story’s this: don’t leap
wherever grass is greener. Backwards creep.
And never burn your bridges, till you’re sure
leapfrogging friends secures your Sinecure.



Davenport Tomorrow
by Michael R. Burch

Davenport tomorrow ...
all the trees stand stark-naked in the sun.

Now it is always summer
and the bees buzz in cesspools,
adapted to a new life.

There are no flowers,
but the weeds, being hardier,
have survived.

The small town has become
a city of millions;
there is no longer a sea,
only a huge sewer,
but the children don't mind.

They still study
rocks and stars,
but biology is a forgotten science ...
after all, what is life?

Davenport tomorrow ...
all the children murmur through vein-streaked gills
whispered wonders of long-ago.


Evangelical Fever
by Michael R. Burch

Welcome to global warming:
temperature 109.
You believe in God, not in science,
but isn’t the weather Divine?

#AI #RAD #RADICAL #MRBIA #MRBRAD #MRBRADICAL #MRBSCIENCE

birds take flight on a windowless night

but the crows

continue to gather

nosy beaked

wings, oil-streaked

they have no business among us

watching our eyes

laughter

silences our lies

and the den grows quieter

faster

without the heat

stalking pointed feet

one falls prey 

after another

stolen eyes

long gone dry

the widow reaches for her master

gun in hand

sleeping sand

the crows do finally scatter

TLACAELEL [to audience as spectators]
            Hear ye! Of these five games, his majesty
            The emperor has won the first two rounds,
            And Hungry Prince has crowned the third and fourth.
            Who takes this final set will clinch the match.

HUNGRY PRINCE [aside to Motecuhzoma]
            Motecuhzoma, why not call it quits,
            While thus we tilt in equilibrium,
            So time may be arrested in his stride,
            And nothing will be proven to your loss.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Oh yes, well, well you should prevaricate,
            Since you recoil, and your horoscope
            Is but a bunk, evasive, spurious sham.

HUNGRY PRINCE
            We used to sport like willful brothers once.
            This pointless schism scathes me to the core.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Play on! Your grace, equip him for the serve.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Behold this little token of a ball-
            Through this ordeal, symbolic of the sun
            When- swallowed nightly by the earth’s dark mouth-
            He spars with demons of the underworld,
            To birth anew at dawn. So does this sphere,
            Across the blood-bathed flagstones of this court.
            Regard it so. The gods assort you both.
            To one: bask in divine approval’s nod,
            The other: dark ignominy. Engage!

                He throws the ball to HUNGRY PRINCE. MOTECUHZOMA          and HUNGRY PRINCE leave the stage separately.

TLACAELEL
            A solid serve.

PRIEST OF TLALOC          A capital return.

TLACAELEL
            These salt-and-pepper gents belie their age.
            Look how they swoop, like eagles ******-beaked.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Our monarch springs, a glistening dynamo.

TLACAELEL
            And his contender sheds years as he runs.
            Tell me, your eminence,
            What are your sentiments on Hungry Prince?

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            Though not a brilliant statesman, he remains
            The most perceptive prophet of the earth,
            With whom the gods must share their captain’s logs,
            His auspices so rarely miss their mark.

TLACAELEL
            You’d buy his soothsaying?

PRIEST OF TLALOC                           I'd say I would.

TLACAELEL
            That’s to the heart of this imbroglio.

PRIEST OF TLALOC
            What is the real dispute, then, of this duel?

TLACAELEL
            You’d know their true contention?

PRIEST OF TLALOC                                     Tell me.

TLACAELEL                                                                 So . . .

Death encroaching
up the road well-traveled, toeing the
yellow lines, kicking dust from its boots.
It knows not where it heads, but
blindly follows the weary speech of travelers
long gone.

An old shack, rotting wood and splintered
bone, through the door it walks, shivering
the hinges an early winter. Boards creak
underfoot, and pleading eyes look up
from a face wrinkled enough to know.

Through dusty towns it walks, drawing
eyes shining with life and age towards the
beaked mask black against horror and hope.
Pebbles ground underfoot, but with precision,
each one chosen by the shadowed heel.

Boys run across roads, chasing careless *****
with thoughts between moments.
A dark stranger passes, shoulders knocked
and apologies thrown. The ground littered,
amidst rock and dust, but the boots pass on,
ignored but to be remembered.

One hunch back hitchhiker,
seeking prehistoric medicine
had a meet n' greet with deadly plants
even in these woods he felt a steady wind,
from history's distant trippy roots,
when he reached out his decrepit hand
same time found he couldn't move
nor breathe, blue beaked
then he grew wings and flew
for what seem like a few weeks
drowning in green blue ridge
mountain beauty, rushing water
leaving plumage useless
the truth hurts
like landing face first
as space-time winds down
the hour glass's last turn: through.
The Crax was eaten up
by Magdalena's whirlpool.