My Most Popular Poems On the Internet I

My most popular poems on the Internet (I) A number of my poems and translations have gone viral, according to Google, and some have been copied onto hundreds to thousands of web pages. That’s a lot of cutting and pasting! The results below are the results returned by Google at the time I did the searches. This original epigram returns more than 37,000 results: Epitaph for a Palestinian Child by Michael R. Burch I lived as best I could, and then I died. Be careful where you step: the grave is wide. This Sappho translation has more than 3,500 results: Sappho, fragment 42 loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Eros harrows my heart: wild winds whipping desolate mountains uprooting oaks. This Sappho translation has more than 1,700 results: Sappho, fragment 155 loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch A short revealing frock? It's just my luck your lips were made to mock! This Bertolt Brecht translation has more than 1,500 results: The Burning of the Books by Bertolt Brecht loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch When the Regime commanded the unlawful books to be burned, teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires. Then a banished writer, one of the best, scanning the list of excommunicated texts, became enraged: he’d been excluded! He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath, to write fiery letters to the incompetents in power? Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen? Haven’t I always reported the truth? Now here you are, treating me like a liar! Burn me! This original poem returns nearly 1,500 results for the first line: Something ?for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba by Michael R. Burch Something inescapable is lost? lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight, vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars immeasurable and void. Something uncapturable is gone? gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn, scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass and remembrance. Something unforgettable is past? blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less, which finality swept into a corner, where it lies in dust and cobwebs and silence. NOTE: This is, I think, the first poem I wrote which didn’t rhyme, and the only one for quite some time. I consider one of the best of my early poems; it was written in my late teens. This original poem has over 1,300 results: Bible Libel by Michael R. Burch If God is good, half the Bible is libel. This may be the first poem I wrote. I read the Bible from cover to cover at age 11, and it was a traumatic experience. But I can’t remember if I wrote the epigram then, or came up with it later. In any case, it was probably written between age 11 and 13, or thereabouts. My translation/interpretation/modernization of Robert Burns’ “To a Mouse” returns over 1,300 results. It’s a bit long for this page but can be found online with a Google search like: Michael R. Burch Robert Burns translations. This Glaucus translation returns more than 1,000 results: Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell? Only the sea gulls in their high, lonely circuits may tell. ?Michael R. Burch, after Glaucus This Yamaguchi Seishi translation returns over 1,000 results: Grasses wilt: the braking locomotive grinds to a halt ?Yamaguchi Seishi, loose translation by Michael R. Burch This original poem has more than 1,000 results: Frail Envelope of Flesh by Michael R. Burch for the mothers and children of Gaza Frail envelope of flesh, lying cold on the surgeon’s table with anguished eyes like your mother’s eyes and a heartbeat weak, unstable ... Frail crucible of dust, brief flower come to this? your tiny hand in your mother’s hand for a last bewildered kiss ... Brief mayfly of a child, to live two artless years! Now your mother’s lips seal up your lips from the Deluge of her Tears ... This poem won a big Penguin Books (UK) Valentine poetry contest and returns over 800 results for the first line: Mother’s Smile by Michael R. Burch for my mother, Christine Ena Burch There never was a fonder smile than mother’s smile, no softer touch than mother’s touch. So sleep awhile and know she loves you more than “much.” So more than “much,” much more than “all.” Though tender words, these do not speak of love at all, nor how we fall and mother’s there, nor how we reach from nightmares in the ticking night and she is there to hold us tight. There never was a stronger back than father’s back, that held our weight and lifted us, when we were small, and bore us till we reached the gate, then held our hands that first bright mile till we could run, and did, and flew. But, oh, a mother’s tender smile will leap and follow after you! This original epigram returns over 750 results: Autumn Conundrum by Michael R. Burch It’s not that every leaf must finally fall, it’s just that we can never catch them all. This William Dunbar translation has more than 700 results: Sweet Rose of Virtue by William Dunbar (1460-1525) loose translation by Michael R. Burch Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness, delightful lily of youthful wantonness, richest in bounty and in beauty clear and in every virtue that is held most dear? except only that you are merciless. Into your garden, today, I followed you; there I saw flowers of freshest hue, both white and red, delightful to see, and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently? yet everywhere, no odor but rue. I fear that March with his last arctic blast has slain my fair rose of pallid and gentle cast, whose piteous death does my heart such pain that, if I could, I would compose her roots again? so comforting her bowering leaves have been. 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