Best Chaucer Poems

Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain green;
for your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain.

By...

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Rejection
a roundel by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it's useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.

I'm guiltless, yet my sentence has been passed.
I tell you truly, needless now to feign:
Your beauty...

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Chaucer and a Cup and Saucer

I just had been reading some Chaucer
When I picked up a cup from its saucer
Looked below and by chance saw Chaucer's name
Would this help me find much fortune and fame?

Now could it really be that Canterbury Tails
Have been hard to...

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Your yen two wol slee me sodenly

Surrounded by warm sand
Black pools deep as the
Cold in your face

Your hand
With emollient grace
Will cut the wire

Carved then polished
Hair that twists as
In a Spring flood

Your two eyes will slay me suddenly...

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Escape
rondel/roundel by Geoffrey Chaucer
translation by Michael R. Burch

Since I’m escaped from Love and yet still fat,
I never plan to be in his prison lean;
Since I am free, I count it not a bean.

He may question me and counter this and that;
I care not: I will...

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I walked the rails out of my town this day and saw many things.
Train tracks are different marking a way that is often rank.
Weeds are here seen to conceal trash and rubbish a wild wind brings.
Building has bare back to rails with its loading dock...

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Have you met my cat named Chaucer?
His naughtiness will steal your heart,
He has milk in his own saucer,
And as you'll see, he's very smart;

He plays around the garden green 
With his favourite woolly ball,
He knows how to keep himself clean,
He purrs and runs around the...

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Geoffry Chaucer served as a page
first poet of ye olde English age
His Canterbury tales quite a feat
a work  never did complete...

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Welcome, Summer
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Now welcome, Summer, with your sun so soft,
since you’ve banished Winter with her icy weather
and driven away her long nights’ frosts.
Saint Valentine, in the heavens aloft,
the songbirds sing your praises together!

Now welcome, Summer, with your sun so...

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Three Roundels by Geoffrey Chaucer

I. Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
translation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain green;
for your eyes slay me suddenly;
their...

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Morning At Work

Impaired by his tremors
And a troublesome cough,
He turned fur into felt
Before cooling things off.

He drooled once or twice
And grew cold in his bones,
But he shaped all the felt
Into all of the cones.


Noon

His 'venomous vipers'
Grew restless again
And woke as the toxins
Played games with his...

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Morning In The Hair Salon

She would chat and then nod as she washed
And laugh as she dried and then curled
But behind all the smiles that were wide, fixed and false
She felt challenged and alone in the world.

She felt angry and always so tired
With debts adding...

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Morning

Having sighed a great sigh
He perused all his tools
From the mainsprings and tweezers
To the wheels and the jewels.

He removed the large case latch
From the pocket watch cover
To survey all the insides
As he would any other.

He wasn't familiar
With a watch of that kind
And confused why the...

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Morning

The Innkeeper checked his watch once again 
Hoping the chef's feelings weren't hurt.
The last time they were, he arrived two hours late
And then left, serving just his dessert.

Sadly the chef, on this day of all days
Turned up filthy, flies open and drunk.
A black cat meowed...

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Somewhere in the fog is Chaucer's prologue
to those Canterberry tales.
Ms. Layton I must thank for storing it
in my memory bank which of late seems
to have paled.
No offense to Mr. Chaucer but it's way past
time to toss her before this old brain is derailed.
For some day...

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