Best Aeschylus Poems

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The First Gathering, The Wrath, The Return Of Zeus
( "Wherein Fate and Destiny Reign Over Blind Worship )


Else the throngs of mortals find the truth,
 
teeming in the angry hordes they may,
 
forget to pay alms and worship us all,

instead learn to burn their own...

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Mahmoud Darwish English Translations of Arabic Poems



Palestine
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This land gives us
all that makes life worthwhile:
April's blushing advances,
the aroma of bread warming at dawn,
a woman haranguing men,
the poetry of Aeschylus,
love's trembling beginnings,
a boulder covered with moss,
mothers who dance to the...

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A few of my favorite things

A few of my favorite things 

Looking at paintings of Cezanne Rembrandt Van Gogh and Rodin 
thinking of their lives and of their times 
of where and when they painted 
of why and of who they where with 
These are...

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Erato whispered in Man’s ears
poetic words that he could hear;
they are ancient as Greece itself
which became Man’s only real wealth.
Aeschylus heard her wordy waves
that sparked his tragedian plays.
Her soft words waft Man’s atmosphere
producing a William Shakespeare.
Today her words still ride the wind
murmur in the ears...

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Oh, ancient Greece, 
How much you have filled my soul.
The aesthetics of your kind, 
Are more than satisfied
By your beautiful eyes.

The epics of grace, 
Odysseus and Helen’s sublime face.
The war between two cities, 
And a tale of returning to beauty.

The dialectic of Socrates trial, 
The...

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Athenian Epitaphs

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell?
Only the sea gulls
in their high, lonely circuits may tell. 
—Michael R. Burch, after Glaucus

Passerby,...

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The gods’ privilege is never to die,
the men’s tragedy is most die 
at some point in time of their life’s cycle.

The gods’ tragedy is gods can never die,
the men’s privilege is to die when time comes.

Because of her beauty and a handful of dust she...

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Sleep our glorious ancestors, sleep!
Do not be disturbed.
We,
your descendants would never betray
The blood you have shed to liberate
Our land.
The Land of:
Homer and Hesiod
Aeschylus and Euripides
Socrates and Plato
Hypocrates  and Alexander

For

We would never let another enemy,
No matter how powerful,
To invade our holy motherland-
The birthplace:
Of Philosophy
Of Democracy,
Of...

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(On the morning of February 25, 1983, the great dramatist 
Tennessee Williams was found dead in a New York hotel suite. 
He had choked on the plastic cap of his eyedrops bottle, which
he habitually held in his mouth when applying the eyedrops.
The alcohol and pills...

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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 to sing.

What songs long forgotten occur to you now—
a babe...

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Death by Turtle
(An Eagles Snack Kills Aeschylus)

With light along the quiet beach receding
Sun and sand sink on obfuscated facts
Great tragedian figures don't live forever in the past

Along the shore where Sicilian eagles lift their wings
To drop turtles from on high to crack a shell wide...

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What goes on in the gist of his mind?

He anxiously awaits the moment to hold his first love again,
to confine her in his palm and formulate a rhyme so fine,
a line so devine that when the array of stanzas
intertwine a quatrain is solified....
formed and cultivated-
born...

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Written: January 20, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Unseeking Seeker 

Quote: “There is no sickness worse for me than words that to be kind must lie.” Aeschylus,

Line of inquiry: 

truth imbibed
awaits assimilation
we feel it in our bones
in time dissolved meditation 

    ...

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There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.
—Aeschylus

Happiness in Memoriam

Each neuron tingles with happiness, in unnerving vise.
Presently, the squeeze of brain, heart and grit, unbearable.
The lion’s faint, tin clatters, straw pieces pecked, crows gather.
...

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- AESCHYLUS
Strange thoughts give words
a pain. A mountain unfolds
a tunnel.He who carries a vase of ashes
must enter the gate to plot a path

for history.Ideas have turned into stones.
A violence erupts in long winter night.
Nobody understands the bird of time
who has lost the flight.

The bones learn...

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