Long Auschwitz Poems

My most popular poems on the Internet (II)

A number of my poems and translations have gone viral, according to Google, and some have been copied onto hundreds to thousands of web pages. That’s a lot...

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Winter
by Michael R. Burch

The rose of love's bright promise
lies torn by her own thorn;
her scent was sweet
but at her feet
the pallid aphids mourn.

The lilac of devotion
has felt the winter hoar
and shed her dress;
companionless,
she shivers—nude, forlorn.

Published...

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Auschwitz Rose
by Michael R. Burch
											
There is a Rose at Auschwitz, in the briar,
a rose like Sharon’s, lovely as her name.
The world forgot her, and is not the same.
I still love her and extend this sacred...

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Sonnets X-XVI


Archaischer Torso Apollos (“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...

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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems - IV - Primo Levi

Shema
by Primo Levi
translation by Michael R. Burch

You who live secure
in your comfortable houses, 
who return each evening to find
warm food, 
welcoming faces...

consider whether this...

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I wanted to write
 The best slavery poem   ever written—
Perhaps win a Pulitzer or Faulkner. 

I had every intention of conforming 
To the standards 
Of modern verse and composition, 
Lyrics fluidly written, 
Perfect...

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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems (I)

These are poems about World War II and the Holocaust, which is also called the Shoah in Hebrew. 



Epitaph for a Child of the Holocaust
by Michael R. Burch

I...

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My most popular poems on the Internet (III)

A number of my poems and translations have gone viral, according to Google, and some have been copied onto hundreds to thousands of web pages. That’s a lot...

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My heart failed a few times again today, but each time it came back to life.
This is no time for poets and philosophers.
***
It is strange that in such a short time a person can come...

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Overarching Genocide

Noah built the wooden Ark in his homeland instructed by God
to save his wife three sons and their wives from drowning a life 
raft rescue boat of sorts with three decks and only one...

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Exclusive Birth Rights

I am German and guilty as charged by history and evil parental culpability
privileged by life and proxy thus I refuse to forget ancestral perpetration
though I propose without any diminution that systematic genocide is...

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Yet Africa is
expected to fall in
line 
With speed and
alacrity 
Or be headed back to
Europe 
For much deserved
censure
And sanitization in
the heart
Of brutish Europe!
Have we not seen
them in action
At Treblinka and
Auschwitz, brother
With their atomic
bombs in Hiroshima
With their...

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Made in Neonazia

Life wrote you and I this poem on a sunny day of watching
penguin’s colonies bathing on the beaches near Cape Town 
A splendid display of harmony of sun ocean and tourist attraction
warm sand...

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When I was young, my father wrote poems, lovely poems, in Yiddish.
In one poem, he called me, his only son, his 'kadish'l, the one who would recite the Kaddish, the Prayer for the Deceased, for...

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holókauston

Around that table picture the scene 
Self appointed leaders if you know what I mean 
What were the topics on the agenda that day 
The Jewish race is about to pay 

Who gave the right...

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In nineteen forty four on the third of September
Is a date in my mind that I'll always remember
It was the date of the last train to Auschwitz in Poland
From Westerbork transit camp in the Nederland.

The...

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Facial Recognition Blues

Physicists speculating about a cosmic hologram 
Anarchists debating about the next message from Uncle Sam
The archaic ageing of the technology of the Telegram
An innocent waiting for an answer from an Annogram

Images of scientific...

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Speechless at Auschwitz
by Ko Un
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

At Auschwitz
piles of glasses
mountains of shoes ...
returning, we stared out different windows.

Ko Un speaks for all of us, by not knowing what to say about the...

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when Animal Farm is not a feeding manual

and Clockwork Orange strikes at midnight

Dali’s time piece warps under face value

and an eagle-eyed-cuckoo flies over its nest


beneath the cover of cotton candy clouds

she relieves herself into Magritte’s...

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"AOC"

AOC, AOC,sitting on limbs of a dead
green tree,
Shooting innocent cows so merrily!
They must go, this socialist screams!
Deaf to God's creatures painful moos 
and cries,
As their carcasses pile up to the skies.
And their sanguine blood soaking God's 
earth,...

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Fiddling About. 
by The Didds

Annual Concert, DMT, Time to act, you and me,
At Dauntsey School, a painted floor, performed in the round, 
with rehearsals at Sheep Street church, St Joe's school hall, the con club...

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How You Sould Handle A Scandal

There Are many ways that things can handle;
Be safe, sane and secure  instead of scandal;
Law abide;
Never lied;
Burn away the corruption with lighted candle.

Jim Horn 

A Load of Poems

Poems in...

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Flies, drawn to their only sustenance, cloud around my head.
In this cloudless desert sky  - blank, deep-arching cavern of thought  - 
Unblinking  sun stares down but this fire-bird will not fly,
Has no...

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Who was Lizzie Van Zyl?
A small girl stands on Woodcock Bridge
Pointing at her reflection in the water.
The glint from the sun, and a cold wind,
Distorts a distant memory of gold, and places long forgotten.

For the...

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It was a glorious day in 1943,
The kind of day you wish to hug your children carefree.
The frozen Polish Winter winds were almost dying,
The golden promise of Summer made everything sing,

It was very sunny on...

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