Long Indian Poems

Native American Translations

Cherokee Travelers' Blessing I
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I will extract the thorns from your feet.
For yet a little while, we will walk life's sunlit paths together.
I will love you like my own...

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Juvenilia: Early Poems XI

Myth
by Michael R. Burch

after the sprung rhythm of Dylan Thomas

Here the recalcitrant wind
sighs with grievance and remorse
over fields of wayward gorse
and thistle-throttled lanes.

And she is the myth of the scythed wheat
hewn and...

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I.	  The Settlement

          Hickory bark bluffs
          at the blend of two 
    ...

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I have travelled through the cluttered corridors of my tired mind countless times. 
I have reached deep into the dark abyss of my captive soul and in that profoundly disturbing darkness, I went searching to...

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Sharing my translation of a famous poem (Sadharan Meye) written by Rabindranath Tagore, who won Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. It's one of his story-like poems, written in Bengali, which is one of the...

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 A French ‘Indianist’ Doctor: A Tribute to a Die-hard Humanist
                         ...

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Villanelle: No man can on his own escape written fate

         For Thiru-Valluvar, the “nameless” author of 
the THIRUK-KURAL

Note: In my previous posts, especially on Canto 38, I...

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Where do we come in
					in medias res  not knowing nor caring when
doesn’t everybody pine being number one we leave behind our lives in pages  pictures  or else make for images of what...

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Evening came and the Harvest Moon was about to rise,
little did Johnny know this night would bring him a surprise…

Johnny lived in a mushroom village with many folks just like him. He carried an over...

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- - Chapter 2: Adult Responsibility (With Some Breaks) - -     

By ten years old, no weekends off, 
Or Saturday cartoons, 
Although I did have cash to spend, 
I felt my...

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Bharathidasan’s “Pulikku nay enta muulai” (To the Tiger, the Dog knows no safe dwelling!) translated by T. Wignesan 

Bharathidasan (1891-1964) was a self-proclaimed disciple of the eminent Brahmin poet: Cuppiramania Bharathiyar (cf. two poems of...

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Wovoka in the Feverland

In the Dying-Grass Moon came another winter to claim the old and sick.
This was when the first messengers came
To the desolation known as Pine Ridge.
They came riding in at the end of...

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The First Thanksgiving (Sept. 3, 1578)

The shortest distance to Cathay 1
(Land of riches: silks, teas and spices)
Lay to the north to the South Sea. 2
Didn’t Barlow tell the King, 3
Was reserved for England.

The routes ‘round...

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The Untold story of a Sitar Part 3 Concluded

.
A soothing musical note
Was coming out and floating 
In the air 
In that White coated 
Old auditorium  
Of a different era
Which was so alive before...

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I remember my cherished Wolf Cub pack, 
How I loved those Wednesday evenings, 
The games, the pomp and seriousness of the camps, 
The different coloured scarves, sweaters and hair 
During the mass meetings, 
The solemnity...

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Setting aside richly incorporated through homeless economies,
we have three political ways
to compare a population's internal status:
a. Aboriginal populations,
b. Immigrants--sometimes appearing as multiculturing creolic waves,
c. EmPowered Natives.

Natives are aboriginals
unless a more self-centered wave of supremacist immigrants
stake...

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I am an Outlander
Who lives on a high hill
Overlooking a man-made lake
That once was a rapidly rushing river
Along whose banks the Ozarks Bluff Dwellers and the Osage and then Delaware
Hunted, fished, and created shelter
For their...

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Translation of Mahakavi Bharathiyar’s poem: “Asai Mugam” or “Beloved Face”
                         ...

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Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness—as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed fledglings beneath a warm wing
and coos to them softly, unable...

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Beware The Ides of March 2023
 
Ides simply referred to first new moon, 
which usually fell between 
the thirteenth and fifteenth day
of a given month.

The following events all occurred
fifteenth of March 
across span of millenniums.

One:...

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Two, perhaps three miles out to sea, beyond the reef to Zapatillas,
Bocas’ dual sand-edged footprint jewels with jungle centre trees, 
Francesco’s outboard boat heads out to Caribbean’s deeper blue.

Where sun burns softer gringo skin, but...

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WINTER, 1948 [40 Saxton Street]

for W.W

The winter nights that pass now
are so unlike the winter nights
that passed before, that I often
struggle back in those suspended moments
when sleep grapples for a hold,
to once again hear the...

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Paper preparer please find cherry terror jackfrreeze frost frozen ice cycle are called and not chosen God fearing beware betrayal falls to all chosen green guys small my Homeys disaster only falls once in a...

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Thirty years ago, long before ISIS started executing Kurds, Muslims and Christians, I hired a Pakistani Muslim as an art director in Chicago. I was an Irish Catholic editor putting out a small national magazine....

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Date:  September  2050

Damian stood at the front door 
Ushering everybody out to the waiting 
Limousine. "Come on my People 
Be quick about it wifies!"  Sidney
And Saderi were willing to go along
For the...

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