Come Down, For Harold Bloom

Come Down by Michael R. Burch for Harold Bloom Come down, O, come down from your high mountain tower. How coldly the wind blows, how late this chill hour ... and I cannot wait for a meteor shower to show you the time must be now, or not ever. Come down, O, come down from the high mountain heather blown to the lees as fierce northern gales sever. Come down, or your heart will grow cold as the weather when winter devours and spring returns never. I dedicated this poem to Harold Bloom after reading his introduction to the Best American Poetry anthology he edited. Bloom seemed intent on claiming poetry as the province of the uber-reader (i.e., himself), but I remember reading poems by Blake, Burns, cummings, Dickinson, Frost, Housman, Eliot, Pound, Shakespeare, Whitman, Yeats, et al, and grokking them as a boy, without any “advanced” instruction from anyone. Rant: The Elite by Michael R. Burch When I heard Harold Bloom unsurprisingly say: Poetry is necessarily difficult. It is our elitist art ... I felt a small suspicious thrill. After all, sweetheart, isn’t this who we are? Aren’t we obviously better, and certainly fairer and taller, than they are? Though once I found Ezra Pound perhaps a smidgen too profound, perhaps a bit over-fond of Benito and the advantages of fascism to be taken ad finem, like high tea with a pure white spot of intellectualism and an artificial sweetener, calorie-free. I know! I know! Politics has nothing to do with art And it tempts us so to be elite, to stand apart ... but somehow the word just doesn’t ring true, echoing effetely away—the distance from me to you. Of course, politics has nothing to do with art, but sometimes art has everything to do with becoming elite, with climbing the cultural ladder, with being able to meet someone more Exalted than you, who can demonstrate how to fart so that everyone below claims one’s odor is sweet. You had to be there! We were falling apart with gratitude! We saw him! We wept at his feet! Though someone will always be far, far above you, clouding your air, gazing down at you with a look of wondering despair. Shadowselves by Michael R. Burch In our hearts, knowing fewer days?and milder?beckon, how now are we to measure that wick by which we reckon the time we have remaining? We are shadows spawned by a blue spurt of candlelight. Darkly, we watch ourselves flicker. Where shall we go when the flame burns less bright? When chill night steals our vigor? Why are we less than ourselves? We are shadows. Where is the fire of our youth? We grow cold. Why does our future loom dark? We are old. And why do we shiver? In our hearts, seeing fewer days?and briefer?breaking, now, even more, we treasure this brittle leaf-like aching that tells us we are living. Dust (II) by Michael R. Burch We are dust and to dust we must return ... but why, then, life’s pointless sojourn? Leave Taking (II) by Michael R. Burch Although the earth renews itself, and spring is lovelier for all the rot of fall, I think of yellow leaves that cling and hang by fingertips to life, let go . . . and all men see is one bright instance of departure, the flame that, at least height, warms nothing. I, have never liked to think the ants that march here will deem them useless, grimly tramping by, and so I gather leaves’ dry hopeless brilliance, to feel their prickly edges, like my own, to understand their incurled worn resilience? youth’s tenderness long, callously, outgrown. I even feel the pleasure of their sting, the stab of life. I do not think?at all? to be renewed, as earth is every spring. I do not hope words cluster where they fall. I only hope one leaf, wild-spiraling, illuminates the void, till glad hearts sing. It's not that every leaf must finally fall ... it's just that we can never catch them all. Less Heroic Couplets: Funding Fundamentals by Michael R. Burch *"I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble." ? Mark Twain Making sense from nonsense is quite sensible! Suppose you’re running low on moolah, need some cash to paint your toes ... Just invent a new religion; claim it saves lost souls from hell; have the converts write you checks; take major debit cards as well; take MasterCard and Visa and good-as-gold Amex; hell, lend and charge them interest, whether payday loan or flex. Thus out of perfect nonsense, glittery ores of this great mine, you’ll earn an easy living and your toes will truly shine! Marsh Song by Michael R. Burch Here there is only the great sad song of the reeds and the silent herons, wraithlike in the mist, and a few drab sunken stones, unblessed by the sunlight these late sixteen thousand years, and the beaded dews that drench strange ferns, like tears collected against an overwhelming sadness. Here the marsh exposes its dejectedness, its gutted rotting belly, and its roots rise out of the earth’s distended heaviness, to claw hard at existence, till the scars remind us that we all have wounds, and I have learned again that living is despair as the herons cleave the placid, dreamless air. Moon Lake by Michael R. Burch Starlit recorder of summer nights, what magic spell bewitches you? They say that all lovers love first in the dark . . . Is it true? Is it true? Is it true? Starry-eyed seer of all that appears and all that has appeared? What sights have you seen? What dreams have you dreamed? What rhetoric have you heard? Is love an oration, or is it a word? Have you heard? Have you heard? Have you heard? Tomb Lake by Michael R. Burch Go down to the valley where mockingbirds cry, alone, ever lonely . . . yes, go down to die. And dream in your dying you never shall wake. Go down to the valley; go down to Tomb Lake. Tomb Lake is a cauldron of souls such as yours? mad souls without meaning, frail souls without force. Tomb Lake is a graveyard reserved for the dead. They lie in her shallows and sleep in her bed.