by John Greenleaf Whittier  (1807 – 1892)

“As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits which be Angels of Light are augmented not only by the Divine Light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood fire: and as the celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same.”

        COR. AGRIPPA,
           Occult Philosophy, Book I. chap. v.

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow; and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”

                                       EMERSON

The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east; we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, —
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd’s-grass for the cows;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold’s pole of birch,
The **** his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.

Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag, wavering to and fro,
Crossed and recrossed the wingàd snow:
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

So all night long the storm roared on:
The morning broke without a sun;
In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of Nature’s geometric signs,
And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below, —
A universe of sky and snow!
The old familiar sights of ours
Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;
A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
A fenceless drift what once was road;
The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;
The well-curb had a Chinese roof;
And even the long sweep, high aloof,
In its slant spendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa’s leaning miracle.

A prompt, decisive man, no breath
Our father wasted: “Boys, a path!”
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy
Count such a summons less than joy?)
Our buskins on our feet we drew;
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,
To guard our necks and ears from snow,
We cut the solid whiteness through.
And, where the drift was deepest, made
A tunnel walled and overlaid
With dazzling crystal: we had read
Of rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave,
And to our own his name we gave,
With many a wish the luck were ours
To test his lamp’s supernal powers.
We reached the barn with merry din,
And roused the prisoned brutes within.
The old horse ****** his long head out,
And grave with wonder gazed about;
The **** his ***** greeting said,
And forth his speckled harem led;
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,
And mild reproach of hunger looked;
The hornëd patriarch of the sheep,
Like Egypt’s Amun roused from sleep,
Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
And emphasized with stamp of foot.

All day the gusty north-wind bore
The loosening drift its breath before;
Low circling round its southern zone,
The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.
No church-bell lent its Christian tone
To the savage air, no social smoke
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.
A solitude made more intense
By dreary-voicëd elements,
The shrieking of the mindless wind,
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
Beyond the circle of our hearth
No welcome sound of toil or mirth
Unbound the spell, and testified
Of human life and thought outside.
We minded that the sharpest ear
The buried brooklet could not hear,
The music of whose liquid lip
Had been to us companionship,
And, in our lonely life, had grown
To have an almost human tone.

As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back, —
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art

The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
The crane and pendent trammels showed,
The Turks’ heads on the andirons glowed;
While childish fancy, prompt to tell
The meaning of the miracle,
Whispered the old rhyme: “Under the tree,
When fire outdoors burns merrily,
There the witches are making tea.”

The moon above the eastern wood
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood
Transfigured in the silver flood,
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
Took shadow, or the sombre green
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
Against the whiteness at their back.
For such a world and such a night
Most fitting that unwarming light,
Which only seemed where’er it fell
To make the coldness visible.

Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed;
The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons’ straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.

What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north-wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire’s ruddy glow.
O Time and Change! — with hair as gray
As was my sire’s that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah, brother! only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now, —
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o’er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.

We tread the paths their feet have worn,
We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o’er,
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor!
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just,)
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!

We sped the time with stories old,
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,
Or stammered from our school-book lore
“The Chief of Gambia’s golden shore.”
How often since, when all the land
Was clay in Slavery’s shaping hand,
As if a far-blown trumpet stirred
Dame Mercy Warren’s rousing word:
“Does not the voice of reason cry,
Claim the first right which Nature gave,
From the red scourge of ******* to fly,
Nor deign to live a burdened slave!”
Our father rode again his ride
On Memphremagog’s wooded side;
Sat down again to moose and samp
In trapper’s hut and Indian camp;
Lived o’er the old idyllic ease
Beneath St. François’ hemlock-trees;
Again for him the moonlight shone
On Norman cap and bodiced zone;
Again he heard the violin play
Which led the village dance away.
And mingled in its merry whirl
The grandam and the laughing girl.
Or, nearer home, our steps he led
Where Salisbury’s level marshes spread
Mile-wide as flies the laden bee;
Where merry mowers, hale and strong,
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along
The low green prairies of the sea.
We shared the fishing off Boar’s Head,
And round the rocky Isles of Shoals
The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;
The chowder on the sand-beach made,
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,
With spoons of clam-shell from the ***.
We heard the tales of witchcraft old,
And dream and sign and marvel told
To sleepy listeners as they lay
Stretched idly on the salted hay,
Adrift along the winding shores,
When favoring breezes deigned to blow
The square sail of the gundelow
And idle lay the useless oars.

Our mother, while she turned her wheel
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,
Told how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight on Concheco town,
And how her own great-uncle bore
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
Recalling, in her fitting phrase,
So rich and picturesque and free
(The common unrhymed poetry
Of simple life and country ways,)
The story of her early days, —
She made us welcome to her home;
Old hearths grew wide to give us room;
We stole with her a frightened look
At the gray wizard’s conjuring-book,
The fame whereof went far and wide
Through all the simple country side;
We heard the hawks at twilight play,
The boat-horn on Piscataqua,
The loon’s weird laughter far away;
We fished her little trout-brook, knew
What flowers in wood and meadow grew,
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay,
The ducks’ black squadron anchored lay,
And heard the wild-geese calling loud
Beneath the gray November cloud.
Then, haply, with a look more grave,
And soberer tone, some tale she gave
From painful Sewel’s ancient tome,
Beloved in every Quaker home,
Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,
Or Chalkley’s Journal, old and quaint, —
Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint! —
Who, when the dreary calms prevailed,
And water-**** and bread-cask failed,
And cruel, hungry eyes pursued
His portly presence mad for food,
With dark hints muttered under breath
Of casting lots for life or death,

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,
To be himself the sacrifice.
Then, suddenly, as if to save
The good man from his living grave,
A ripple on the water grew,
A school of porpoise flashed in view.
“Take, eat,” he said, “and be content;
These fishes in my stead are sent
By Him who gave the tangled ram
To spare the child of Abraham.”
Our uncle, innocent of books,
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,
The ancient teachers never dumb
Of Nature’s unhoused lyceum.
In moons and tides and weather wise,
He read the clouds as prophecies,
And foul or fair could well divine,
By many an occult hint and sign,
Holding the cunning-warded keys
To all the woodcraft mysteries;
Himself to Nature’s heart so near
v That all her voices in his ear
Of beast or bird had meanings clear,
Like Apollonius of old,
Who knew the tales the sparrows told,
Or Hermes, who interpreted
What the sage cranes of Nilus said;
A simple, guileless, childlike man,
Content to live where life began;
Strong only on his native grounds,
The little world of sights and sounds
Whose girdle was the parish bounds,
Whereof his fondly partial pride
The common features magnified,
As Surrey hills to mountains grew
In White of Selborne’s loving view, —
He told how teal and loon he shot,
And how the eagle’s eggs he got,
The feats on pond and river done,
The prodigies of rod and gun;
Till, warming with the tales he told,
Forgotten was the outside cold,
The bitter wind unheeded blew,
From ripening corn the pigeons flew,
The partridge drummed i’ the wood, the mink
Went fishing down the river-brink.
In fields with bean or clover gay,
The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,
Peered from the doorway of his cell;
The muskrat plied the mason’s trade,
And tier by tier his mud-walls laid;
And from the shagbark overhead
The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.

Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer
And voice in dreams I see and hear, —
The sweetest woman ever Fate
Perverse denied a household mate,
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less
Found peace in love’s unselfishness,
And welcome wheresoe’er she went,
A calm and gracious element,
Whose presence seemed the sweet income
And womanly atmosphere of home, —
Called up her girlhood memories,
The huskings and the apple-bees,
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails,
Weaving through all the poor details
And homespun warp of circumstance
A golden woof-thread of romance.
For well she kept her genial mood
And simple faith of maidenhood;
Before her still a cloud-land lay,
The mirage loomed across her way;
The morning dew, that dries so soon
With others, glistened at her noon;
Through years of toil and soil and care,
From glossy tress to thin gray hair,
All unprofaned she held apart
The ****** fancies of the heart.
Be shame to him of woman born
Who hath for such but thought of scorn.
There, too, our elder sister plied
Her evening task the stand beside;
A full, rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and almost sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice.

O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best
That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest,
Rest from all bitter thoughts and things!
How many a poor one’s blessing went
With thee beneath the low green tent
Whose curtain never outward swings!

As one who held herself a part
Of all she saw, and let her heart
Against the household ***** lean,
Upon the motley-braided mat
Our youngest and our dearest sat,
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
Now bathed in the unfading green
And holy peace of Paradise.
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,
Or from the shade of saintly palms,
Or silver reach of river calms,
Do those large eyes behold me still?
With me one little year ago: —
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain;
And now, when summer south-winds blow
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
Yet following me where’er I went
With dark eyes full of love’s content.
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
The air with sweetness; all the hills
Stretch green to June’s unclouded sky;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh,
A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.
And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust with me?
And while in life’s late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,
The master of the district school
Held at the fire his favored place,
Its warm glow lit a laughing face
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared
The uncertain prophecy of beard.
He teased the mitten-blinded cat,
Played cross-pins on my uncle’s hat,
Sang songs, and told us what befalls
In classic Dartmouth’s college halls.
Born the wild Northern hills among,
From whence his yeoman father wrung
By patient toil subsistence scant,
Not competence and yet not want,
He early gained the power to pay
His cheerful, self-reliant way;
Could doff at ease his scholar’s gown
To peddle wares from town to town;
Or through the long vacation’s reach
In lonely lowland districts teach,
Where all the droll experience found
At stranger hearths in boarding round,
The moonlit skater’s keen delight,
The sleigh-drive through the frosty night,
The rustic party, with its rough
Accompaniment of blind-man’s-buff,
And whirling-plate, and forfeits paid,
His winter task a pastime made.
Happy the snow-locked homes wherein
He tuned his merry violin,

Or played the athlete in the barn,
Or held the good dame’s winding-yarn,
Or mirth-provoking versions told
Of classic legends rare and old,
Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome
Had all the commonplace of home,
And little seemed at best the odds
‘Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods;
Where Pindus-born Arachthus took
The guise of any grist-mill brook,
And dread Olympus at his will
Became a huckleberry hill.

A careless boy that night he seemed;
But at his desk he had the look
And air of one who wisely schemed,
And hostage from the future took
In trainëd thought and lore of book.
Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he
Shall Freedom’s young apostles be,
Who, following in War’s ****** trail,
Shall every lingering wrong assail;
All chains from limb and spirit strike,
Uplift the black and white alike;
Scatter before their swift advance
The darkness and the ignorance,
The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,
Which nurtured Treason’s monstrous growth,
Made ****** pastime, and the hell
Of prison-torture possible;
The cruel lie of caste refute,
Old forms remould, and substitute
For Slavery’s lash the freeman’s will,
For blind routine, wise-handed skill;
A school-house plant on every hill,
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence
The quick wires of intelligence;
Till North and South together brought
Shall own the same electric thought,
In peace a common flag salute,
And, side by side in labor’s free
And unresentful rivalry,
Harvest the fields wherein they fought.

Another guest that winter night
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.
Unmarked by time, and yet not young,
The honeyed music of her tongue
And words of meekness scarcely told
A nature passionate and bold,

Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,
Its milder features dwarfed beside
Her unbent will’s majestic pride.
She sat among us, at the best,
A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,
Rebuking with her cultured phrase
Our homeliness of words and ways.
A certain pard-like, treacherous grace
Swayed the lithe limbs and drooped the lash,
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash;
And under low brows, black with night,
Rayed out at times a dangerous light;
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face
Presaging ill to him whom Fate
Condemned to share her love or hate.
A woman tropical, intense
In thought and act, in soul and sense,
She blended in a like degree
The ***** and the devotee,
Revealing with each freak or feint
The temper of Petruchio’s Kate,
The raptures of Siena’s saint.
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist
Had facile power to form a fist;
The warm, dark languish of her eyes
Was never safe from wrath’s surprise.
Brows saintly calm and lips devout
Knew every change of scowl and pout;
And the sweet voice had notes more high
And shrill for social battle-cry.

Since then what old cathedral town
Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown,
What convent-gate has held its lock
Against the challenge of her knock!
Through Smyrna’s plague-hushed thoroughfares,
Up sea-set Malta’s rocky stairs,
Gray olive slopes of hills that hem
Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem,
Or startling on her desert throne
The crazy Queen of Lebanon
With claims fantastic as her own,
Her tireless feet have held their way;
And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray,
She watches under Eastern skies,
With hope each day renewed and fresh,
The Lord’s quick coming in the flesh,
Whereof she dreams and prophesies!
Where’er her troubled path may be,
The Lord’s sweet pity with her go!
The outward wayward life we see,
The hidden springs we may not know.
Nor is it given us to discern
What threads the fatal sisters spun,
Through what ancestral years has run
The sorrow with the woman born,
What forged her cruel chain of moods,
What set her feet in solitudes,
And held the love within her mute,
What mingled madness in the blood,
A life-long discord and annoy,
Water of tears with oil of joy,
And hid within the folded bud
Perversities of flower and fruit.
It is not ours to separate
The tangled skein of will and fate,
To show what metes and bounds should stand
Upon the soul’s debatable land,
And between choice and Providence
Divide the circle of events;
But He who knows our frame is just,
Merciful and compassionate,
And full of sweet assurances
And hope for all the language is,
That He remembereth we are dust!

At last the great logs, crumbling low,
Sent out a dull and duller glow,
The bull’s-eye watch that hung in view,
Ticking its weary circuit through,
Pointed with mutely warning sign
Its black hand to the hour of nine.
That sign the pleasant circle broke:
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray,
And laid it tenderly away;
Then roused himself to safely cover
The dull red brands with ashes over.
And while, with care, our mother laid
The work aside, her steps she stayed
One moment, seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and health,
And love’s contentment more than wealth,
With simple wishes (not the weak,
Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek,
But such as warm the generous heart,
O’er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)
That none might lack, that bitter night,
For bread and clothing, warmth and light.

Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the straggling train
Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes
From lip to lip; the younger folks
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled,
Then toiled again the cavalcade
O’er windy hill, through clogged ravine,
And woodland paths that wound between
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed.
From every barn a team afoot,
At every house a new recruit,
Where, drawn by Nature’s subtlest law,
Haply the watchful young men saw
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious eyes of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in mock defence
Against the snow-ball’s compliments,
And reading in each missive tost
The charm with Eden never lost.
We heard once more the sleigh-bells’ sound;
And, following where the teamsters led,
The wise old Doctor went his round,
Just pausing at our door to say,
In the brief autocratic way
Of one who, prompt at Duty’s call,
Was free to urge her claim on all,
That some poor neighbor sick abed
At night our mother’s aid would need.
For, one in generous thought and deed,
What mattered in the sufferer’s sight
The Quaker matron’s inward light,
The Doctor’s mail of Calvin’s creed?
All hearts confess the saints elect
Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
And melt not in an acid sect
The Christian pearl of charity!

So days went on: a week had passed
Since the great world was heard from last.
The Almanac we studied o’er,
Read and reread our little store
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score;
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid,
And poetry, (or good or bad,
A single book was all we had,)
Where Ellwood’s meek, drab-skirted Muse,
A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.
Lo! broadening outward as we read,
To warmer zones the horizon spread
In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
A   nd daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica’s everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti’s Mainote Greeks,
A Turk’s head at each saddle-bow!
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,
Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding bell and dirge of death:
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,
And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!

Clasp, Angel of the backword look
And folded wings of ashen gray
And voice of echoes far away,
The brazen covers of thy book;
The weird palimpsest old and vast,
Wherein thou hid’st the spectral past;
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow
The characters of joy and woe;
The monographs of outlived years,
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,
Green hills of life that ***** to death,
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees
Shade off to mournful cypresses
With the white amaranths underneath.
Even while I look, I can but heed
The restless sands’ incessant fall,
Importunate hours that hours succeed,
Each clamorous with its own sharp need,
And duty keeping pace with all.
Shut down and clasp with heavy lids;
I hear again the voice that bids
The dreamer leave his dream midway
For larger hopes and graver fears:
Life greatens in these later years,
The century’s aloe flowers to-day!

Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
The worldling’s eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends — the few
Who yet remain — shall pause to view
These Flemish pictures of old days;
Sit with me by the homestead hearth,
And stretch the hands of memory forth
To warm them at the wood-fire’s blaze!
And thanks untraced to lips unknown
Shall greet me like the odors blown
From unseen meadows newly mown,
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;
The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.

Written in  1865

As olive or grape  .  .  .
So shed, paired souls are threshed,
  .  .  .  Out of their bodies.

The human soul was threshed out like maize
   in the endless
granary of defeated actions,
   of mean things that happened,
to the very edge of endurance, and beyond,
and not only death, but many deaths,
   came to each one:
each day a tiny death, dust, worm, a light
flicked off in the mud at the city's edge,
   a tiny death with coarse wings
pierced into each man like a short lance
and the man was besieged by the bread or by the knife,
the cattle-dealer: the child of sea-harbours,
   or the dark captain of the plough,
or the rag-picker of snarled streets:
everybody lost heart, anxiously waiting for death,
   the short death of every day:
and the grinding bad luck of every day was
like a black cup that they drank,
   with their hands shaking.

Boaz, overcome with weariness, by torchlight
made his pallet on the threshing floor
where all day he had worked, and now he slept
among the bushels of threshed wheat.

The old man owned wheatfields and barley,
and though he was rich, he was still fair-minded.
No filth soured the sweetness of his well.
No hot iron of torture whitened in his forge.

His beard was silver as a brook in April.
He bound sheaves without the strain of hate
or envy. He saw gleaners pass, and said,
Let handfuls of the fat ears fall to them.

The man's mind, clear of untoward feeling,
clothed itself in candor. He wore clean robes.
His heaped granaries spilled over always
toward the poor, no less than public fountains.

Boaz did well by his workers and by kinsmen.
He was generous, and moderate. Women held him
worthier than younger men, for youth is handsome,
but to him in his old age came greatness.

An old man, nearing his first source, may find
the timelessness beyond times of trouble.
And though fire burned in young men's eyes,
to Ruth the eyes of Boaz shone clear light.

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.

On a grey asphalt midwest road
lay a terrible place to weep and moan..
where white ***** rain trickles low
on poison ivies and blurry saxophones..

..with unified yellow lights that neither blink nor stare
unending love
the throbbing blue road
and metal statues whose souls lay bare.

The silent night gathered all
even my brown pain
and the terrible fall
what remained was none-so-less
threshed and withered like those leaves of green..
..empty thoughts, silent stills,
and wanderlings, with dreamy quills.

Broken i lay, with those captured skies..
flashes of lightning
empty gazes and embittered souls
painful verses of a poets play
are those terrible blue dreams, they say.

The Shijing or **** Jing or Shih-Ching (“Book of Songs” or “Book of Odes”) is the oldest Chinese poetry collection, with the poems included believed to date from around 1200 BC to 600 BC. According to tradition the poems were selected and edited by Confucius himself. Since most ancient poetry did not rhyme, these may be the world’s oldest extant rhyming poems.

Shijing Ode #4: “JIU MU”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In the South, beneath trees with drooping branches
thick with vines that make them shady,
we find our lovely princely lady:
May she repose in happiness!

In the South, beneath trees with drooping branches
whose clinging vines make hot days shady,
we wish love’s embrace for our lovely lady:
May she repose in happiness!

In the South, beneath trees with drooping branches
whose vines, entwining, make them shady,
we wish true love for our lovely lady:
May she repose in happiness!


Shijing Ode #6: “TAO YAO”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The peach tree is elegant and tender;
its flowers are fragrant, and bright.
A young lady now enters her future home
and will manage it well, day and night.

The peach tree is elegant and tender;
its fruits are abundant, and sweet.
A young lady now enters her future home
and will make it welcome to everyone she greets.

The peach tree is elegant and tender;
it shelters with bough, leaf and flower.
A young lady now enters her future home
and will make it her family’s bower.


Shijing Ode #9: “HAN GUANG”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In the South tall trees without branches
offer men no shelter.
By the Han the girls loiter,
but it’s vain to entice them.
For the breadth of the Han
cannot be swum
and the length of the Jiang
requires more than a raft.

When cords of firewood are needed,
I would cut down tall thorns to bring them more.
Those girls on their way to their future homes?
I would feed their horses.
But the breadth of the Han
cannot be swum
and the length of the Jiang
requires more than a raft.

When cords of firewood are needed,
I would cut down tall trees to bring them more.
Those girls on their way to their future homes?
I would feed their colts.
But the breadth of the Han
cannot be swum
and the length of the Jiang
requires more than a raft.


Shijing Ode #10: “RU FEN”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

By raised banks of the Ru,
I cut down branches in the brake.
Not seeing my lord
caused me heartache.

By raised banks of the Ru,
I cut down branches by the tide.
When I saw my lord at last,
he did not cast me aside.

The bream flashes its red tail;
the royal court’s a blazing fire.
Though it blazes afar,
still his loved ones are near ...

It was apparently believed that the bream’s tail turned red when it was in danger. Here the term “lord” does not necessarily mean the man in question was a royal himself. Chinese women of that era often called their husbands “lord.” Take, for instance, Ezra Pound’s famous loose translation “The River Merchant’s Wife.” Speaking of Pound, I borrowed the word “brake” from his translation of this poem, although I worked primarily from more accurate translations. In the final line, it may be that the wife or lover is suggesting that no matter what happens, the man in question will have a place to go, or perhaps she is urging him to return regardless. The original poem had “mother and father” rather than “family” or “loved ones,” but in those days young married couples often lived with the husband’s parents. So a suggestion to return to his parents could be a suggestion to return to his wife as well.


Shijing Ode #12: “QUE CHAO”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The nest is the magpie's
but the dove occupies it.
A young lady’s soon heading to her future home;
a hundred carriages will attend her.

The nest is the magpie's
but the dove takes it over.
A young lady’s soon heading to her future home;
a hundred carriages will escort her.

The nest is the magpie's
but the dove possesses it.
A young lady’s soon heading to her future home;
a hundred carriages complete her procession.


Shijing Ode #26: “BO ZHOU” from “The Odes of Bei”
ancient Chinese rhyming poem circa (1200 BC - 600 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This cypress-wood boat floats about,
meandering with the current.
Meanwhile, I am distraught and sleepless,
as if inflicted with a painful wound.
Not because I have no wine,
and can’t wander aimlessly about!

But my mind is not a mirror
able to echo all impressions.
Yes, I have brothers,
but they are undependable.
I meet their anger with silence.

My mind is not a stone
to be easily cast aside.
My mind is not a mat
to be conveniently rolled up.
My conduct so far has been exemplary,
with nothing to criticize.

Yet my anxious heart hesitates
because I’m hated by the herd,
inflicted with many distresses,
heaped with insults, not a few.
Silently I consider my case,
until, startled, as if from sleep, I clutch my breast.

Consider the sun and the moon:
how did the latter exceed the former?
Now sorrow clings to my heart
like an unwashed dress.
Silently I consider my options,
but lack the wings to fly away.



Chixiao (“The Owl”)
by Duke Zhou (c. 1100-1000 BC)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Owl!
You've stolen my offspring,
Don't shatter my nest!
When with labors of love
I nurtured my fledglings.

Before the skies darkened
And the dark rains fell,
I gathered mulberry twigs
To thatch my nest,
Yet scoundrels now dare
Impugn my enterprise.

With fingers chafed rough
By the reeds I plucked
And the straw I threshed,
I now write these words,
Too hoarse to speak:
I am homeless!

My wings are withered,
My tail torn away,
My home toppled
And tossed into the rain,
My cry a distressed peep.

The Duke of Zhou (circa 1100-1000 BC), a member of the Zhou Dynasty also known as Ji Dan, played a major role in Chinese history and culture. He has been called “probably the first real person to step over the threshold of myth into Chinese history” and he may be the first Chinese poet we know by name today, and the spiritual ancestor of Confucius as well. The Duke was a capable and loyal regent for his young nephew King Cheng and successfully suppressed a number of rebellions. He has also been credited with writing the I Ching and the Book of Songs, also called the Book of Odes, and with creating yayue (“elegant music”) which became Chinese classical music. His poem “The Owl” was apparently written while he was away fighting on his nephew’s behalf, after court dissenters accused him of plotting to usurp the throne. Apparently the poem worked, as King Cheng welcomed his uncle back, and the Duke remained faithful till the end. Keywords/Tags: China, Chinese, translation, ode, odes, kingdom, king, duke, homeless, homelessness, homesick, homesickness

Keywords/Tags: Shijing, ****-Jing, Shih-Ching, translation, book, songs, odes, Confucius, Chinese, ancient, rhyme, rhyming, love, nature

every moment
is continually shedding itself;
sloughing off the skin of time,
dying, into the past,
to freshen in exposure,

this moment.

to live, really
to breathe, by
impermanence.

constantly transforming,
the body is never solid,
here, there, as atomic flashes,
electrons popping in and out
of existence,
an appearance made,
to depart, in a flicker.

all turns off, like this,
always, eventually,
momentarily.

threshed and stripping
bare chaos
voraciously burns,

returning through extinguish
on smokey black horizons.

sinking, into
tendrils weaving,
knitting by fray,
tapestries engendered
by enveloping decease.

you feel this
don’t you?
unconscious
as much of it may be.

it is the nearest of near,
and dearly intimate,
passions corrosive kiss,
oscillating, opening,
to retract, in flow,
pushing in
to pull away,

thanatos is eros
together, apart again,
together-apart,
here-going.

the heart is aware,
supremely aware of this happening,
even when the mind is fooled
by apparent stability,

and the soul surrenders to
it's inevitability,
even hungering for
divine destruction,
as basic an urge
as the creative impulse.

to be composed
is to be subject to decompose,
fertilizing compositions
in cosmic chasms.

our lungs darkly shining
with every fall of the chest
mirroring,

each breath
one breath closer
to the final breath,

each exhale
a letting go
of what can’t be held
forever,

the expelled
foreshadows annihilation,
on the fading road, towards
this mortal coils entropic end;
a preparation.

to live, surely, is to meet loss
over and over,
to love, fully, is to grieve
again and again,

there is a deep
melancholic knowing
that exists in all living things,

water drops
tears like rain,
leaves fall
like sighs,

everyone,
and everything
dies.

our melancholy
might be sacred
could we truly embrace,
and feel, this reality:

death is the ever present condition.

He catches me in lovin--
liking
him
and it's always striking
how my body acts on whim.
He always looks the best
not wearing any clothes,
makes my ***** point west
with their ***** woes.
He makes me think in lovely
and dresses me in kisses:
purple,
black,
red and bruised up
kisses
(he never misses).
I have a necklace ringing
all around my skinny neck,
I wear his love
like a trophy,
do I look a-wreck?
I make him wreck my body
night after night after night
because I want his gaudy,
pale and beautiful might
to come down all at once
and bury me in flesh;
to fill my ears with grunts
and turn my soil threshed.
Thresh me, thresh me hard,
my beautiful man,
my body's prettier marred
with your harmattan
breezes blowing on my sands;
how I really,
really,
really
like
my
man
because he buries me in hugging
and hides me in his warmth;
he always has me shrugging
the yeses from up north
in the epicenter of all pleasure
rooted in my mind;
it's the greatest measure
of our loving time.
He spanks me 'til I moan,
I **** him 'til he's dry,
his touch turns me to stone and
his stroking makes me cry.
Though it may be sore
after a day or so
my heart is always hurting
from the constant flow
of his body's beautiful fluids,
white and clear and true;
who needs a beautiful blue
when I have my like,
my really,
really,
really
like;
it's better than number two.




(I really,
really,
really like you)

"Twenty years before current time, the Spear Sect, known for only taking one student had its Sect Head accused of practicing Demonic Martial Arts by the leaders of the Murim Orthodox Union and was given the judgment of death."

I.

"A team of horses will struggle to chase down a spoken word. From the Analects of Confucius"

And when they died, their life ebbed away.
The maws of dogma forcing their daggers
To blot out the truth with the blood of the lost.
The orthodox sect's swords painting an old wall
With thin veneer of paint, haphazardly done.

In an unmarked grave lies the spear sect.
Where two died, another lived on.

II.

"An old warhorse in the stable still longs to gallop a thousand li. From the Analects of Confucius."

And they pierced his ribs,
his flesh threshed by deceit and
The facade of the pharisees
forcing him down. In the dark caves
he was placed with the heavy stone.

The shroud is a white sheet
Covering his scarred body.

His life lived on with the sinful:
the tax collectors and the courtesans;
the uncouth and uneducated,
the murderers and drunkards,
the gentiles of the other sects.

Though he lived not as others did.

From one spear he died,
with another he lived,
Leading them with the sacred fire.
Fishing for followers
among the many hungry.

December 2021

FAR-OFF, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,
Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir
And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep
Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep
Men have named beauty.  Thy great leaves enfold
The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
Saw the pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise
In Druid vapour and make the torches dim;
Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him
Who met Fand walking among flaming dew
By a grey shore where the wind never blew,
And lost the world and Emer for a kiss;
And him who drove the gods out of their liss,
And till a hundred moms had flowered red
Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;
And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown
And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown
Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods:
And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,
And sought through lands and islands numberless
years,
Until he found, with laughter and with tears,
A woman of so shining loveliness
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress.  I, too, await
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

Hypocrite,
Hypocrite am I.

Cruel nature
plays the harshest games,
the fire-on-the-Cuyahoga,
****-splatter brain busters.
The city is cooled by her
harsh and horrifyingly
Maternal touch.
Snow falls attractively
on the dying city below,
picaresque and perfect
in this last-winter scene.
The two sky scrapers
pierce through winter's
frozen cocoon,
though envelop will be the
less threshed land.
Slums are ravished in snow,
spoiled by the cold
cold cold crying
of a maiden not warm.
I am buried beneath
layers of snow,
reddened when paled,
angered by my cooling.
Numbing comes with this
frenzied freeze,
like the kids down the street
who grow out their beards
even though they can't
grow their *****.
I am numbed
despite the fact that
Feeling is fruitful;
cruel nature does not wish
for such connections
to fall upon me.
Perhaps it is love,
and I would love to believe so,
that causes her to covet-
no, hoard me so.
Perhaps it is love,
and it so clearly is ringing in this numb numb numbness,
that causes her to bury me
in mountains of snow.
I am counting down the time
til my melt down,
as spring is not so long away.
Perhaps it is love,
and the rising flowers whisper it like jealous children oft do,
that she has always been
so deathly afraid of.
This is the spring of our love,
But we are not as springy as we should be.

Hypocrite,
Hypocrite am I.

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood;
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare;
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
Today the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.

Call us perverted,
But read on first,
Then, by the end,
After our verse,
Call us your worst:
***** old men, gutter snipes,
Lecherous gawkers,
Cause we gaze in wonder and awe
At girls from eighteen to ninety-five.
Don't step back and feign aghast,
Whisper covert tsks, and gasp,
What? Oh such ***** old men!
But we are most the same.

We don't ogle or use a scope
Waiting behind a bush at night,
Til the lights go on
Through windows known to be undrawn.

We don't visit public pools
With goggles and a snorkel,
That's just sick, that's not us,
Our admiration's not so twisted,
We grew up to respect the sisters.

We wonder at the parade of beauty,
So pleasing to our eyes,
They dress to allure
Younger looks,
They swagger, tilt and sashay past
With legs as long as trees,
No VPL to interrupt
The curving imagination.
Compare it to one window-shopping,
Admiring wares and worth;
But please, read every line I wrote
Before bellowing, Pervert.

If we were eighteen years again,
We're lads out plowing fields,
Sowing wild grains,
Reaping refrains of They're boys just being boys.

We had our ancient pleasures,
Still comparable to now;
The lushness of the ripened fruit
Hanging on the bough,
Is for younger hands, not ours.

The columned temples of runway models
With flying buttress thighs,
And the bull-frog fronts and volleyball stunts
Please, but we don't pry.

          (We're not a ***** grabbing lot,
          That's not how we usually talk,
          In fact I haven't shared these thoughts,
          I'm reluctant to do so now).

You know you can't blame us
For what a blind man sees;
The cleavage, high-slits and commando style,
The augmentations meant to beguile
Has caught us in crossfire.

The soft unbleached skin,
The ***** and the neck,
The falling, twirling tresses,
Grace the backs of backless dresses.
Wear grotesques to dissuade us,
To disapprove our ageless looks.

Our eyes don't linger on the bust,
We don't display old men's lust,
In fact we're rather obsequious,
To the point where we're air,
You'd not notice that we're there.
But we are, and we look;
And I remember what it took
To be young and on the hunt
For the Yeti, Loch Ness, or alien jump.

Don't tell your friends we're perverted,
Scurrilous id-focused men;
We're neither. We're average fellows
Watching from the stands.

Yes, our daughters are older than
The babes seen on the screens,
But that has naught to do with us,
We still think like eighteen.

We watch re-runs of Mary Tyler Moore,
Drink tepid tea with toast and jam
To the credits of The Golden Girls;
But when the grandkids come to visit,
We take them for ice-cream,
Or if I take poodle to walk,
They pool like thirsty fleas.
It isn't my intent to bait, but I have eyes to see,
Those girls somewhat eighteen,
Like to please by teasing:
     I really like your wire rims.
Their eyes grip, the wind flips,
Their hands soft and supple...
I'm at a loss-
What's a man to do-
Between forty and forever?

This reaper's aged,
The harvest's in.
The grain that bowed the straw
Has now been threshed,
And milled to flour.
Add heat to rise again.

I
duck into tree light
while this red earth field,
seven years ripe,
germinates small answers
to questions hard planted.

You,
Shroud in silence,
drink the silver night air
while the elusive slips
silently by.

We
stand sky-high
weaving through
grain threshed
wind swept fields.

Suddenly,
awakened by the capacious star's
rising yellow ardor,
verdant implants of dewy life
lift skyward and scatter untrodden roots.

Glacial, the gaze of wintry viridian irides
Silken, the heavenly flesh
Lurid, the flames of a paradise awry
Mourning all the sinister angels have blessed
With their tainted perfection, their hideous lies
Hope shines so thinly in an eonian land barren of all love
Great men become emptied, the tormented cry
Amidst desolation, a beautiful dove
Becomes alive, voicing a longing call
Amongst forgotten pantheons, a saviour resides
Though, broken, gashed, beaten, and threshed
Awakened by beautiful birdsong, driven to reply
Was this an augury? He must strike out to answer this call from above
 To redeem some grace, from the woe of it all

.
Wet welling from earth  .  .  .
Deep valleys, hills, sweating *******,
  .  .  .  I plung into her.


We are lost at sea  .  .  .
In moonless night our soft cries,                                                           ­            
Curled waves drowning us.


Above her in bed  .  .  .
Little breaths lifting our bodies,
Eyes, fingers, dreaming.


Her green eyes are set,
Jewels from sargasso seas,
My ghost ship is wrecked.


Her long hair tangles  .  .  .
No struggle in rising— then,
  .  .  .  We are rapt in bed.


Her eyes blinding me,
Milky way of her body,
  .  .  .  There is a heaven.


In forest we taste  .  .  .
Each other in evergreens,
Hot dews on the moss.


Blissful time kissing  .  .  .
My bare thighs sink into hers,
  .  .  .  Running sands so quick.


As olive or grape  .  .  .
So shed, paired souls are threshed,
  .  .  .  Out of their bodies.


Hummingbirds share truths .  .  .
Nature sounds with all sweetness,
  .  .  .  Bee in the flower.


Always in a field  .  .  .
Wild flowers— a bunch to pick,
  .  .  .  Herself a bouquet.


In the park we walk  .  .  .
Flocks of white birds taking flight,
  .  .  .  Two hearts light as air.


We kissed under moon  .  .  .
Pox of stars grew flowering,
  .  .  .  Nightshade of her lips.


She took me to bed  .  .  .
Skinned in bliss— was reborn, lost,
  .  .  .  In her satin folds.

forgiveness is saving
after days turned years turned months
turn into time thats turned to dust
cleave we shall, and cleave  we didst
and in a kiss, we both find rest

if i could live inside this kiss
i wouldnt mind being a tangled mess
like tracing hands tangle in tresses
tingles  tickle through my lips
edges trailed  with tastes i cant forget

it wouldnt matter if i were more or less
because  kisses of both leave traces tasted
smiles and souls are doubly  mated
truest hunger with truest touch is sated
mind encircles mind in bliss
and hands  seek  places they fit best
finding curves and cravings,
slipping between fingers,
and lingering tender. . .

This love. . . I remember


If we could live inside a kiss,
well love we'd know and live in trust
for much of both are inside this
and moments lost are gained with haste
come rushing back to brains unleashed
from hidden places in the flesh
this beauty rises quick and feasts
let us not in weakness birth a beast
rather shake our fists at foolish lusts
and love, and live, within this kiss

in old love burst anew and threshed

a seed sprouts sudden in my chest
what in a year became a ghost
in a moment crashed
from corners to crest
i remember this thirst

in passion pulled from autumns past
we spring alive in fall at last

Unfoldings
by Michael R. Burch

for Vicki

Time unfolds ...
Your lips were roses.
... petals open, shyly clustering ...
I had dreams
of other seasons.
... ten thousand colors quiver, blossoming.

Night and day ...
Dreams burned within me.
... flowers part themselves, and then they close ...
You were lovely;
I was lonely.
... a ****** yields herself, but no one knows.

Now time goes on ...
I have not seen you.
... within ringed whorls, secrets are exchanged ...
A fire rages;
no one sees it.
... a blossom spreads its flutes to catch the rain.

Seasons flow ...
A dream is dying.
... within parched clusters, life is taking form ...
You were honest;
I was angry.
... petals fling themselves before the storm.

Time is slowing ...
I am older.
... blossoms wither, closing one last time ...
I'd love to see you
and to touch you.
... a flower crumbles, crinkling, worn and dry.

Time contracts ...
I cannot touch you.
... a solitary flower cries for warmth ...
Life goes on as
dreams lose meaning.
... the seeds are scattered, lost within a storm.

Keywords/Tagss: love, roses, petals, unfolding, lips, spring, ******, dreams, time, seasons, storms, summer, drought



Moore or Less
by Michael R. Burch

for Richard Moore

Less is more —
in a dress, I suppose,
and in intimate clothes
like crotchless hose.

But now Moore is less
due to death’s subtraction
and I must confess:
I hate such redaction!



The following translation is the speech of the Sibyl to Aeneas, after he has implored her to help him find his beloved father in the Afterlife, found in the sixth book of the Aeneid ...

The Descent into the Underworld
by Virgil
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The Sibyl began to speak:

“God-blooded Trojan, son of Anchises,
descending into the Underworld’s easy
since Death’s dark door stands eternally unbarred.
But to retrace one’s steps and return to the surface:
that’s the conundrum, that’s the catch!
Godsons have done it, the chosen few
whom welcoming Jupiter favored
and whose virtue merited heaven.
However, even the Blessed find headway’s hard:
immense woods barricade boggy bottomland
where the Cocytus glides with its dark coils.
But if you insist on ferrying the Styx twice
and twice traversing Tartarus,
if Love demands you indulge in such madness,
listen closely to how you must proceed...”



Anna Akhmatova was a great Russian poet, and a personal favorite of mine...

The evening light is broad and yellow
by Anna Akhmatova
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The evening light is broad and yellow;
it glides in on an April rain.
You arrived years late,
yet I’m glad you came.

Please sit down here, beside me,
receive me with welcoming eyes.
Here is my blue notebook
with my childhood poems inside.

Forgive me if I lived in sorrow,
spent too little time rejoicing in the sun.
Forgive, forgive, me, if I mistook
others for you, when you were the One.



Our Sweet Ecologist
by Michael R. Burch

Our sweet ecologist —
what will she do with the ants
and the cockroaches, bedbugs and lice
when they want to live in her pants?



bachelorhoodwinked
by michael r. burch

u
are
charming
& disarming,
but mostly alarming
since all my resolve
dissolved!

u
are
chic
as a sheikh’s
harem girl in the sheets
but my castle’s no longer my own
and my kingdom’s been overthrown!



The Bachelor Spectacular
by Michael R. Burch

One heart? Tossed aside.
The other? A bride’s.
In all his great wisdom, the bachelor decides.

Eeenie, mean-ie, mine-y, mo’,
one gal must stay and one must go.
If she hollers? That’s the show!

No heart can handle such despair!
But hearts get broken, hearts repair.
Next season? The treasoned will rule the air.

Originally published by Light



The Unspectacular Bachelor
by Michael R. Burch

The bachelor is back, he’s black,
and some fair-skinned gals sure want him in the sack!
And, yes, he’s a whole lot smarter
than the previous knights of that peculiar garter.

We can hear the white supremacists stewing:
What the hell are the screenwriters doing?
They know love requires a nice white spark,
and this apprentice is far too dark!



Updated Advice to Amorous Bachelors
by Michael R. Burch

At six-thirty,
feeling flirty,
I put on the hurdy-gurdy ...

But Ms. Purdy,
all alert-y,
kicked me where I’m sore and hurty.

The moral of my story?
To avoid a fate as gory,
flirt with gals a bit more *****-y!



Cut Out the Bachelor Nonsense!
There's a bun in auntie's oven;
now soon you'll have a cousin!
―Michael R. Burch



Time Out
by Michael R. Burch

Time is running out,
no doubt.
Time is running out.

I don’t know what the LORD’s about,
since Time is running out, the Lout!,
and leaving me with gas and gout.

I don’t know what the LORD’s about;
still, it does no good to grouse or pout,
since Time is merely running out,
like quail before a native scout.

’Twill do no good to shout or flout:
Time’s running out,
I have no doubt,
though who knows what the LORD’s about?

No need for faith or even doubt,
since Time is merely running out,
like water from a rusty spout
or mucous from a leaky snout.

Yes, Time is merely running out,
and yet I feel inclined to pout
and truth be told, sometimes to doubt
just what the hell the LORD’s about.



Tr(end)y
by Michael R. Burch

Ain’t it funny how trendy
becomes so dead-endy?
Lava lamps and bell bottoms
soon became “never bought ‘ems.”
While that teenage tattoo
soon’ll have wrinkles too.



This was my first-ever dabble dactyl, my variation of the double dactyl.

Donald Dabble Dactyl #1
by Michael R. Burch

Piggledy-Wiggledy
Ronald McDonald
cursed Donald Trump,
his least favorite clown:

"Why should I try to be
funny as Donald? He
gets all the laughs
claiming upside is down!"

Donald Dabble Dactyls must begin with "Piggledy-Wiggledy" in homage to The Donald's oinkerishness and his 'do. References to clowns, gold-plated toilets and/or diapers are a plus but not required.

Donald Dabble Dactyl #2
by Michael R. Burch

Wond’ringly, blund’ringly
Ronald McDonald
asked, “Who the hell
is this strange orange clown?”

“Why should I try to be
funny as Donnie? He
gets all the laughs
from marks who should frown!”

I see that I violated my prime directive, so "never mind."

Donald Dabble Dactyl #3
by Michael R. Burch

Piggledy-Wiggledy
45th president,
or erstwhile manse resident,
perched on a throne

of gold-plated porcelain
matching his orange “tan,”
bombing Iran
from his twittery phone?



Cowpoke
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

Sleep, old man ...
your day has long since passed.
The endless plains,
cool midnight rains
and changeless ragged cows
alone remain
of what once was.

You cannot know
just how the Change
will **** the windswept plains
that you so loved ...
and so sleep now,
O yes, sleep now ...
before you see just how
the Change will come.

Sleep, old man ...
your dreams are not our dreams.
The Rio Grande,
stark silver sand
and every obscure brand
of steed and cow
are sure to pass away
as you do now.

I believe this poem was written around the same time as “Blue Cowboy,” perhaps on the same day. That was probably sometime around 1974, at age 16 or thereabouts.



Blue Cowboy
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

He slumps against the pommel,
a lonely, heartsick boy—
his horse his sole companion,
his gun his only toy
—and bitterly regretting
he ever came so far,
forsaking all home's comforts
to sleep beneath the stars,
he sighs.

He thinks about the lover
who awaits his kiss no more
till a tear anoints his lashes,
lit by uncaring stars.
He reaches to his aching breast,
withdraws a golden lock,
and kisses it in silence
as empty as his thoughts
while the wind sighs.

Blue cowboy, ride that lonesome ridge
between the earth and distant stars.
Do not fall; the fiends of hell
would leap to feast upon your heart.

Blue cowboy, sift the burnt-out sand
for a drop of water warm and brown.
Dream of streams like silver seams
even as you gulp it down.

Blue cowboy, sing defiant songs
to hide the weakness in your soul.
Blue cowboy, ride that lonesome ridge
and wish that you were going home
as the stars sigh.



Chixiao (“The Owl”)
by Duke Zhou
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Owl!
You've stolen my offspring,
Don't shatter my nest!
When with labors of love
I nurtured my fledglings.

Before the skies darkened
And the dark rains fell,
I gathered mulberry twigs
To thatch my nest,
Yet scoundrels now dare
Impugn my enterprise.

With fingers chafed rough
By the reeds I plucked
And the straw I threshed,
I now write these words,
Too hoarse to speak:
I am homeless!

My wings are withered,
My tail torn away,
My home toppled
And tossed into the rain,
My cry a distressed peep.



The Song of Roland
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16

"for spring in retreat"

Rain down,
strange murmurous water...
no, summer is not yet nigh.

Cease your complaining,
for May is,
calling December a lie,
still rocking the high white sky.

Sleep now,
summer hours...
too soon your time shall come.

Softly straining,
the raining
spring begs, "Let me run
one more hour beneath the sun,
for soon I shall be gone."

Lie down,
weary Roland,
for summer is not yet nigh.

Remember a pyre
of stars blazing higher
upon night’s immense dark sky
unsettling as her eyes,
unregretful, even as you died...

Lie down,
weary Roland,
for summer is not yet nigh.

I believe I wrote “The Song of Roland” around age 16.



That Not-So-Mellow Fellow, Othello
by Michael R. Burch

Not sure ’bout that fellow, Othello,
was he a “hero” or merely **** yellow?
He killed his poor wife
over a handkerchief!
Thus Iago proved his heart Jello.



Time Out!
by Michael R. Burch

Time is at war with my body!
am i Time’s most diligent hobby?
for there’s never Time out
from my low-t and gout
and my once-brilliant mind has grown stodgy!



Waiting Game
by Michael R. Burch

Nothing much to live for,
yet no good reason to die:
life became
a waiting game...
Rain from a clear blue sky.



*******' Ripples
by Michael R. Burch

Men are scared of *******:
that’s why they can’t be seen.
For if they were,
we’d go to war
as in the days of Troy, I ween.



Untitled Epigrams

Teach me to love:
to fly beyond sterile Mars
to percolating Venus.
—Michael R. Burch

The LIV is LIVid:
livid with blood,
and full of egos larger
than continents.
—Michael R. Burch

Evil is as evil does.
Evil never needs a cause.
Evil loves amoral “laws,”
laughs and licks its blood-red claws
while kids are patched together with gauze.
— Michael R. Burch

Poets laud Justice’s
high principles.
Trump just gropes
her raw genitals.
—Michael R. Burch



That Mella Fella
by Michael R. Burch

John Mella was the longtime editor of Light Quarterly.

There once was a fella
named Mella,
who, if you weren’t funny,
would tell ya.
But he was cool, clever, nice,
gave some splendid advice,
and if you did well,
he would sell ya.

Shakespeare had his patrons and publishers; John Mella was one of my favorites in the early going, along with Jean Mellichamp Milliken of The Lyric.



Chip Off the Block
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

In the fusion of poetry and drama,
Shakespeare rules! Jeremy’s a ham: a
chip off the block, like his father and mother.
Part poet? Part ham? Better run for cover!
Now he’s Benedick — most comical of lovers!

NOTE: Jeremy’s father is a poet and his mother is an actress; hence the fusion, or confusion, as the case may be.

Keywords/Tags: Shakespeare, poetry, drama, poet, light verse, humor, life, death, love, Mars, Venus, Othello, Iago, Duke Zhou, Owl, homeless, cowboy, bachelor, Richard Moore, Anna Akhmatova

Loony warbles creeping like a shark bite tucked into the night
I saute the solution of aghast has-been epigones filibustered brunt and brittle by hemlock aspirations of curated fright
Temulentia recognizes the sane from the inane and tragedy from travesty
Flowder imaginary crackjaw Samson skulls of donkeys dissuaded by varnished agony
Skipping through punctuated times the sheepish will profane me with beleaguered notions of time
Blind to the orbit of the eccentric zeitgeist of hopscotch chockablock cohorts deliverance finds no crime
Goose noose Howard Hughes wooden stilts of the gargantuan swerve
Only the alpenglow of hijacked jujitsu spar against redintegration of adversaries with penniless nerve
Sifting through the silt
I barnstorm the ire of glistened tribunes plagued with insipid promenades of set-up still-frame guilt
Enemies became friends deranged like roosters fleecing hens of henpecked anomaly grafted and built
The wasms of moribund prose absconding with latticework of lacrosse in vogue
Temperatures sweltering the quaky schleps of Maverick moons never more rogue
Flashbang grimace parched with slivers of an acclimated post-modern ******
Intimates the intimacy of the flock decorates bolted balderdash too winsome to deprive an earnest plea for peace and please
I conquer the wallbaggers of novantique with the temulentia of mystique
Rarely remanded by the cul-de-sacs of Giants demolishing social rust with a deteriorated sweep
Trip the jostled rhymes of confluency of rhapsody and rapture consummated by nickel gambols by design
Ridiculing the contumely of ragged turgid Reservoir Dogs canine to the itch of foggy moonshine
Yet I dance to the rhythm of a jockey mechanical when devoured by incarceration flimsy with attrition
Lurid livid welters sparkle in damsel jokes of remission against Back to Mine sequence counting Dracula by division
Outtatime in this march of Thriller sublime
Cornered by the otiose Chipotle of musty mangers of egalitarian grime
Blandished by shattered paradigm parallax in circumlocution by mirrored irony
Livid are tepid latticeworks of rax and sedition frozen by limpid “Teachers” piracy
Never was once forever in the dormant daydream
Seamstresses waltzed in autumn woods knowing Hoffa firebrands of wasted Scream
Bloodshot swank is a rackrent of cineaste rakes of dominions of half-baked dishes of disco zenkidu double-take
Limbering languidly through the procession of sectarians seceding from agitprop monopoly
Boarding the Ticket to Ride train authentic never squirmy with illusions of the fake
Slackened Eels slapstick the brackish bracket of appeasement in appeals
Confluence of formula endangered by euphoria that Limerick question is a grubbed dicey deal
Fortunate summit dreaded nadir
All that resides in throbbing hearts tethered like Four Squares littered with boondoggles of fear
Showcase the Shakespeare flown through rickets of balderdash as Bald Eagles the mascot of frisk and wretch
Time to own the Pony Show charade of a mimicry of dilettantes brave in the cradles of antiquity knowing rarely the mummification of symbolism of thirty years of slavery to hallow one veranda upon a kissed by an ***** rose starvation grave
Looted by the pernicious bootstraps of those computed
We ring true the epitaphs of Pine City Stage on the rundles of the marginalia that overflows with Ire refuted embarked on solid cremation for sagacity in tatters of rage denuded
Punctilious liars edgy in facetious gambols in Joker menace flushing hygiene for starlet screen
Malingering on quaffs of sedate aplomb yet to preen
Scrabble superlunary bastions of gabble and garb
The gawsy preternatural séance rather nimble to Duck the Badgers weaponized barb
Fustilugs congregate around ashen rot of cacophony marveling at temerity in contortion for epiphany
Episodic marvel of two lynched paragons of sweltered margins ribald at witwanton persiflage in a campaign for suffrage.
Defected fire crackling with the joy of cacophony
Relishing every maskirovka pedigree of rackrent sovereignty
Slipshod fustilugs burrow bilkey in doctored Hubbard hubs smoking gun for dwarfed sins of blinded light staring Poison Ivy Appetite for Destruction mainlined by profligate amphigory a splintered shard
Complexion fulminates AIM with scourges of backtrack upon backwater miracles of Lake Placid confusion
Envoys to scuttled aliens marauding like they own my street in distinct slender confection even as the odd berates my diffuse dissuaded cineaste direction
I slummock with the slurvian alveolate bonism of prized poverty for Pine City Stages a delope of antelopes torn asunder by the athletes of formidable retention
Minute Mayday MaiDEN curls the forelock of a tucked hedged blush of no greater stupidity than a furrow of piglets in the pews of lyrical surgery
Slowpoke in acerbic flavor I countermand the denizens of urged regency decapitated by orbit if not by ******
Consummated on every brain that God himself believes that liberation can entrust
Enthusiastic chameleon of Mojo Grooves for the languid auditorium of a Revered time behooved to the gallops of threshed figurative sloppy slush
Funded by killjoys emaciated by slippery lies on craven deposits of sedimentary inertia quelled by amusement, grounded into Orange Crush
Urbacity is the usucaption of illegitimate ******* filigrees Armed to the Teeth but respecting the Tree
Winsome is obligatory for a Winslet flippant elder quorums contemn as a malapropism for syndicated armory in chuckling White Broncos evading a Houston test in the gricers of Autumn Heaven lingering with germane plight only reserved for luxury at its best
Aborning sidereal alpine brevity is a scry of evidentiary might of totemic dissolution alchemy so bright
That the chalkboard erasure is a confabulation against simultagnosia in acidic Phuture Bound sight
Because Mission Impossible cavorts with the exotic frictions of the nefarious Biocyte
Trailblazing heydays memorializing an Alpha Bet for September 2004 maydays
Of the scriptural series of mishaps and misadventures for barley grain in deadstock Indiana Jones wayward wayspays
Time to count the Dracula of venom drenched from the aceldama of gritty Gurley lies of a city yet loved because too many oases are despised
But Westwood becomes Eastwood with ******* Grotto as the centripetal but monogamous prize
Hot Tub Time Machine soaring among the cognoscenti of burlesque organized ***** crimes of lullaby Manzarek disguise
So toast to the dead captain of the psychedelic fountain pen of revolution Lorraine Baines fields arise
Time is an adventure that blinks only secondary of truce rather than guarded sheepish mustache of panmixia in genocide widely guillotined without scruple for newsy folksy prejudice on gallywow pride
Yet the sentinels of dirigisme anoint the Caesar of Nostradamus infamy of a Deep Impact symphony
Heard by asteroids and asterisks lurking with Thriller to the end of time known only as enumerated infinity
But enough petty battles squandered on sinking U-Boats torpedoed like ransacked crambazzles from Tucker belligerent with a “War” burnt heated calentures of scorching torches of rigged Scarface cockroach
Because there is no elementary Zion that is chosen to emerge in the barnstorm of flukenhague fluke
Time to rest my laurels on the depredation of safety
Reminding with a glower that saving our city is not an Autopilot of Buccaneer Brady
For the Grand Master Architect is princely in Jerusalem but heralded in Mecca because for too many storks all they want is another baby.
And my answer is that my Terrier Bonds are shaken and stirred by many a yes, probably and maybe in that order of illusion shaken into cocktails of cobblestone gravy
The Soy Sauce livid on mistake exerts a dementia on attrition to enthuse Kansas City joy all too crazy
Swimming in an ocean of Carly Ray Jepsen "Calling Your Name" Queen of Highways' Titanic fortress of Armada music beating the Village People silly over their gabbles against Navy
Born and Raised in a Colorado Springs cage I am snake eyes without crafty disguise  in authenticity to a Patriot Point Break Heist  of the probable doubt of the Zany Billy Zane entrapment of prestige gone madcap with Raiders of never the ambitious but always the lazy
So meditate on my word crimes as I elude detection as Hawthorne Nevada alights with 200 earthquakes in two days in Gray design
Wow what a marvel it is to always know that  you are always Stayin' Alive as the splinter of time capitalizing on sensual crestfallen vibes of a pendulum tsunami "Us and Them" saw wavy
And to the 1776 practical joke that gouges Samson even when thousands of Philistines get crushed in delope
Consider this a declaration of war against your pathetic screwball maze of fog to make a sane man livid with a blushed bravery too fraternal to old craven owls of cruelty beyond the maze of convolution of Istanbul collectively shrouded by lies no stomached demise would appreciate for being gatekeepers of terminus exorbitantly hazy

with yours words still fresh of say
could you have leaned in with something new?
or can you tuck it all away
and continue helping me undo

your words were once threshed to stay
for me to lean and cite to you
and what we've heard
is caressed in clay
pleading and breeding, dripping in hue

the fades are falling from the outside
repeating and bleeding through
with our words dressed up in shame
im feeling and reeling, being pulled into two

Wild



Every noble and tender touch,resonant
Loud my skin,dripping and caressing
You set me apart,_desolate


As I slip through your fingers
I swear against the violets,I swear against the oaths
And my spirits search,_it lingers


Roaming on me,you're a drowning champagne
And I war with myself,I war against my flesh
Hidden in closets,as if I am threshed


You makes my past a dead,Yea!swallowed in the graves
And you take me high,the heights of the rains
So drill with me or I deal with you


Wild

©Historian E.Lexano

This loaf I bake was once golden wheat
which harvested,
threshed then ground
made flour from ripened ears of blessing.

This cheese I churn was once milky froth
which with countless
turning first creamed then set
to hardened thickness of clotted health.

This wine I drink was once fruity grape
which trodden made
from flesh musty liquid
that time changed to nectar-rich pleasure.

This thanks I give was once humbly said
as harvest custom
so feasters could not forget
that abundance appears when heads bend.

suffocating, stuck, struck suddenly stressed
what’s a man to do when he’s sunk, sad and depressed?

The blind, bitter, *******’s been bountifully blessed
but can’t hold his head up high or even bother to dress.

He takes tablets of toxins, he’s told it’s only a test
he’s at the end of his rope now and he’s totally threshed

He’s seen a lot of ****** sights, seen his sisters suppressed
he’s seen the face of god too, but he wasn’t impressed.

Snoring wildly on the emerald carpets
With lush and frantic hue
Cushiony petals are dancing puppets
Destination never has gone through
Crops bearing golden yields
Threshed with ardent love and devotion
There.. farmer's friends crawling deep
Displacing under fine fragmentation
Endless barriers..Endless notes
Endless beauty...Endless codes..