Long Congealing Poems

Postcard 1
by Miklós Radnóti
written August 30, 1944
translated by Michael R. Burch
 
Out of Bulgaria, the great wild roar of the artillery thunders,
resounds on the mountain ridges, rebounds, then ebbs into silence
while here men, beasts, wagons...

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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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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems - III - Miklos Radnoti

Miklos Radnoti was one of the greatest of the Jewish Holocaust poets. He died on a Nazi death march, shot to death in cold...

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My Lords an adjournment is 
Called for...
All my retire;
But holding foremost in your
Thoughts,
I beseech ye,
Thee impudent countenance of
This most ardent denier.
Therefore heed me,
I caution all ye present,
Thou shall not disband;
Moreover, to reassemble at any
Sudden instance...

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Holocaust Poem: "On The Slaughter of the Jews"
by Chaim Nachman Bialik
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Merciful heavens, have pity on me!
If there is a God approachable by men
as yet I have not found him—
Pray for...

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He enters looking bedraggled, tired and worn out, his skin like Vellum, blank and pale. Lifting his eyes to catch their gaze he gives a slight nod to acknowledge their presence. He scans the room...

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A priest once told me that the lump
on my hand was a ganglion,
a fortress of fat besieged by health.
At last it burst and the hand swelled
like an old man's,
shovel shaped and splayed.

It was her black...

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What a pathetic spectacle she makes –
The wordless poet, sunk in her stupor of defeated uninspired misery
She sits alone in the darkness,
Encompassed in her imprisoning spotlight of gloom
Surrounded by a million lights of happy souls
Their...

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On glossy pages generally reserved for stars of stage and screen
golden calves lounging casually on cushioned chaises, deities of decadence
sunlight streamed in black and white through filthy, filmy windows 
as flies converged in the corners...

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6/8/21


Blood stained into lands being conquered
Blood on this can of Monster
Blood in the water
Blood pooling and congealing from all the slaughter
Blood hitting close to home,  when you got a squatter
Blood whether the weather turned...

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Purple Butterflies and Raindrops on Roses

Open my eyes. See the window covered in tiny beads of wet. Hear the raindrops on roses that line the building.  That isn't right. Why can I hear the...

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aswirl within tremendous maelstroms
universal united uninhabitable cauldron
tempered with analogous:
outrageous, portentous
thunderous cacophony in tandem

with thick mucilaginous fog
metaphorically postpartum
nebulous placenta afterbirth
and/or proto planets aborted

per primordial material
slowly (millions of years) coalescence
annealed bubbling primeval soup
engendering (extant

via immeasurably immense stretches...

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On the edge of metropolitan midnight
he lays in a breathless silence
rasping the evanescing yesterdays to his windows
both open and locked,
while the unknowing below in stale smoke barrooms,
wait to sear his wounds and retell his life
in...

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Come to me my Knightly Prince
with the sword you galently fence
On your steed you proudly ride
The battle calls you to its side

I await, your lady fair
as I twine my golden hair
I dream of you, my...

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Each drop that lay congealing.Hardened pools of hearts blood feeling.Stacked higher to a ceiling which is seemingly without end or sight of this sorrow swelling.I can't stop or staunch the sound of silence so keenly...

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(I used to be a teacher. My last year teaching a student poisoned my drink. The principal refused to involve the authorities and the student received only one day of in school suspension sitting in...

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This cross mark of identity, staid lore
the last encounter, recognizing's score
memorable, the lost, the size of war
turnover my resolve, feeling's what for!

My holding on to being, rich or poor
the nights, the restless feeling, the encore
refuse...

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Evening time

Evening time.
Softness.
Laughter of child sound.
Creak of backyard swing through the open windows.
Bird song heard
Through the softening caressing light
Slanted through dust motes
Gathering shadows.

Pandora keeping company;
House of the rising sun to
Diva Amazing Grace to Roberta “Like...

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Images

Searing cold vibrations
ringing in the well;
shifting sands in the moonlight
obscuring the only trail.

A song sinking, shattered
upon a dissonant reef;
pregnant clouds low flying
over the tidal grief.

Voices in crescendo
of sharply focused gall;
severed strands fraying
in the fabric of...

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(At the remote Mayerling hunting lodge, 
on January 30, 1889, two young people’s 
lives were extinguished.  Crown Prince 
Rudolf, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, 
and his young lover, Countess Mary Vetsera, 
died in circumstances...

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The night is frosted glass.
Daylight’s clouds - restless like my love -
and scattered wildly heretofore -
somehow made a pact
to nimbly rearrange themselves.
Congealing in this chilling autumn eve -
translucent -
the clouds have blended in with dusk,
obliterating...

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Tarry not, worry not, hurry not
When fountains of fears
Overwhelm the dot and clot
Congealing in tears

That rain rivers
On your serene court
As hope shivers and quivers
At the prospect rot

Decomposes the serenity
For which you long
As sagacity and unity
Sound...

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As a frozen stream, nothing flows from within,
leaving a mass glacial vacuum, void of validation.
Craving rudimentary meaning, souls begin a quest.
Devoid of happiness, the exodus is almost obscene.


Unrepentant, rebuking attachment to the physical;
It pursues warmth...

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in the beginning,
there was a cathedral 
of silence so long, 
I could discern blood 
congealing,
my face had cracked
in a mirror of denial


and as the horror 
of a putrid filth
unmasked in its entirety


I hid,in my castle...

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Drifting, always drifting for reward
the spilling fate around me covets, hoards
and that which God abounds in me, His ford
is dissipated faith, as if some chord
of emptiness surrounds, and then affords
no entry to His being, no...

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