Long Arrows Poems

Happy Valentine's Day
                                ...

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I often surprise many people in many ways
With the words I say…with the actions I make…
It’s extraordinary how many seek high praise
With the words they say…with the actions they fake…

Neither will I…
Assume the worst in...

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These are translations of some of the oldest Japanese waka, which evolved into tanka, renga and haiku. 

While you decline to cry,
high on the mountainside
a single stalk of plumegrass wilts.
—O no Yasumaro (circa 711), translation...

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Today, catching sight of the mallards
crying over Lake Iware:
Must I too vanish into the clouds?
—Prince Otsu translation by Michael R. Burch  

This world—
to what may we compare it?
To autumn fields
lying darkening at dusk
illuminated by...

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An old Greek word, ecclesia,
is often translated as church,
but could also be thought of as a civilization
acting civilly,
as a citizenry
acting as responsible citizens.

The noun side of Ecclesia
casts residents as consumers
of democratic and economic cooperative systems,
while...

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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...

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Medieval Poem V

A Proverb from Winfred's Time
anonymous Old English poem, circa 757-786
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
The procrastinator puts off purpose,
never initiates anything marvelous,
never succeeds, and dies alone.

2.
The late-deed-doer delays glory-striving,
never indulges daring dreams,
never succeeds,...

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Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like searchlights seeking contact in the distance . . .

Quiescent unions...

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I.
Treasures That May Be Found In Destiny's New Shift

( Mille viri sententia agere nescit donec suscipit calamum scribere.)

For a brief spell, I hung my hammock in the shade
of the ancient tall oak tree, that God's...

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Was the place where we climbing down the bank
Then arrived, alpine and, for what was there
Such as, that any eyesight would be shrank.

Similar to landslide that in side bare
Before Trento the Adige just smote,
Or for...

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Translations of the Oldest English Rhyming Poems

The Rhymed Poem aka The Rhyming Poem aka The Riming Poem
Old English/Anglo-Saxon poem from the Exeter Book, circa 990 AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

(excerpt)
He who granted me life...

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(based on Aldous Huxley's book "Brave New World")

Human hatchery

Clink clink clink clink...
Test tubes prattling past
along the chrome plated production line.
Glistening under fake fluorescence
humming in harmony
with the magnetic motors
of conveyors, centrifuges and camshafts.
Biological blobs of gamete...

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The night sky was dark but for the beam of light that glared through the trees before them as they walked into the woods.  Joulupukki and Lumi were careful not to get to close...

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POEMS ABOUT EROS AND CUPID

These are translations of ancient Greek poems about Eros. Eros was the Greek counterpart of the Roman god Cupid. While today we tend to think of Cupid as an angelic cherub...

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In the heart where your naivety resides
you wonder what haunts the sun
and why pain enjoys your childhood eyes,
when you see warm blood run
then you know that death can color
and like you, death loves a dramatic...

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“Strange Creatures and The Forest of Egregore” 

Where do we go -

when our rosebuds
stop still in the cold,
unwanted, 
along the unopened road?

we walk into the 
forest alone, 
there we meet 
strange creatures -

some say 
they...

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Stately stood Princess Amber in all her finery,
Emerald tunic over a crimson gown,
With gems inlaid in her rustling gown,
Her arms bangled in intricate gold slowly rose,
Her slender fingers rested on her heaving bosom,
Listening to unstopping...

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The Roman administrators came for the wealth of our worship
demanding that I crack the church's coffers wide open
for their needs, for the Empire's desperate embellishments,
in place of gold I presented the poor
I told the onery...

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			I

The Holy Bible said seven kingdoms would arise,
then like windblown grains of sand, fall to the dust
Six kingdoms have come and gone, blinked their eyes
and we’re now, in these last days, living on the cusp

But...

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We are the days that we’ve become. 
moments dripping gifted from
the lounging clocks in rolling melted sightings, 
given by the gifted madness of a soulmate’s fightings. 

Our lives wrapped up in phrases coined
in books like,...

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Poem One: Inspired by my reading of -Lady Labyrinth's---magnificent

poem ,  "Courting the Sublime Significance of Nothingness"

 (1.)  Poem One

Seeking The Boundaries Of Love's Depths And Her Hand

The air, its surging breath sings

into the...

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Note:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley,  Born 4 August 1792
Horsham, Sussex, England[1]
Died , 8 July 1822 (aged 29)
Gulf of La Spezia, Kingdom of Sardinia (now Italy)
Occupation	Poet, dramatist, essayist, novelist
Alma mater	University College, Oxford (no degree)
Literary movement	Romanticism
Spouse	Harriet Westbrook
(m. 1811;...

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“The External World of the Internal”

when the Internal 
finally woke up,

it was like all the words 
in that book, flew at It 
like flaming arrows, 
an external barage, a tale, 
of trading 10 for 50,
a...

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There sits behind deep forests hidden,
A sight to behold, place of all sins ridden,
Where the great rivers give life and churn,
A thousand diamonds and the trees sing
Along with the wind, ruled by the great King.

Generous...

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This became their routine for the next four days, until on the fourth night they were looking for a clearing in which to ground the deer, when the marker became so bright in front of...

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