Best Presaged Poems

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			A Gealic Song

Gneiss. 
	Ancient.
Vying with Earth herself for the Crown of Age.

In the Hebrides
Lie the Stones of Calanais
Stubborn chthonic deities of a common past
Rising up and standing against all.
You
More than a beautiful metaphor 
Of what I have seen forged in that deep, deep heart;
A heart...

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Blessed me as a Girl, why god?why me?
Its me or my weak soul?
Somebody can be so cruel, I didn't understand the semantics of life?
I couldn't resist strength to collide with them.
Was Woefully screaming but nobody could hear me!
Beyond imagination  I went through the obscured...

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It happened quickly, not three full days
after the last sturdy leaf of the
flowering linden tree surrendered to
late fall winds.

Snowfall, lots of it. Over a foot
the first time. Shoveling, digging out,
slow traffic, and all those school closings.
A combination of weighty snow and hard ice.

At night, after...

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The Panther
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand bars. Nothing beyond.
Lithe, swinging with a rhythmic easy stride,
he circles,...

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Those Who...


                  Those who are presaged to selflessly save innocent life

                 ...

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Something I have long suspected
Might very well happen is in fact
Already moving full-steam ahead
Towards our seeming desolate shore 

But this bit I might as well confess
Is way out of the extra-ordinary fare
That the poets had long presaged
Albeit not with appropriate conviction

But when I heard that...

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I

Hungry earthworms
Forever entombed in the bowels
Of mother earth
Awake

Defy this asceticism and prostrate
For your ultimate destiny
Lies not in the dogmatic 
Steady march along beaten footpaths

Hungry earthworms
These reminiscences of plaintive cooing
They do not placate
Those dethroned, deprived spirits
Of our fallen ancestors

Ancient dejection above
Deploy your genius here
On this demesne
Extirpate...

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This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea.

First Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael...

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Upon exiting the womb...

23,190 days ago,

Yours truly got hashtagged
as the 2,975,075,410TH
person alive on Earth
according to website
https://worldpopulationhistory.org/
my-population-number/.

Come November 15, 2022
(a little more than
four months from now -
actually one hundred twenty days
after today July 11, 2022),
the world's population
projected to reach eight billion.

The latter date underlined
and iterated above
recognized...

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Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within, while his composed will
emanates dynamism. Otherwise
the firmly muscled abdomen could...

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No sooner than we set foot within said domicile
attestation to so called gentleman’s’ agreement with guile
initially infrequently, but incessantly as time elapsed Isle 
never forget (nor will spouse forgive) with rancor and rile 
ceaselessly besieging, bruiting bare-knuckle skirmishes 
for us to remove ourselves and personal...

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When I started to write this rhyme
I thought that this very instant
Was my own, precious time
My presaged, peculiar moment
Maybe I was in my prime
Perhaps it was my promised minute
But the feeling was so sublime
That I would remember it forever...

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Come, You
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, of leukemia and its complications. I had a...

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New Year's Eve 2021

December thirty first
two thousand twenty one countdown
will transparently and seamlessly stream into
simultaneously linkedin January first
two thousand and twenty two,
whereby the Ball a geodesic sphere,
12 feet in diameter,
and weighing 11,875 pounds.

The aforementioned Ball covered
with a total of 2,688
Waterford Crystal triangles
vary in size, and...

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'Twas not the sin of sloth the Visigoth
rained down on Rome: the bitter taste of Gaul.
By moral indolence, His passions wroth.
Care lacked, and inward rot presaged their fall.


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for the Sin of Sloth Poetry Contest
sponsored by Margarita Lillico
written on 07/02/2022
...

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