Long Dimly Poems

It's peaceful here in my backyard.
The crows sound happy
with warm October sunlight.

I just read about a deadly gathering in Las Vegas.
Absence of sun-drenched peace.
Inconvenient this time of lost loss.
Death is always inconvenient,
even when invited.

A veteran,
about...

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I love you only because I love you
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I love you only because I love you;
I am torn between loving and not loving you,
Between apathy and desire.
My heart vacillates...

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Sonnet LXXXI-LXXXIX

Day, and Night
by Michael R. Burch

The moon exposes pockmarked scars of craters;
her visage, veiled by willows, palely looms.
And we who rise each day to grind a living,
dream each scented night of such perfumes
as drew...

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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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Every Day You Play
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Every day you play with Infinity’s rays.
Exquisite visitor, you arrive with the flowers and the water.
You are vastly more than this immaculate head I clasp...

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Today is assiduously
religiously different,
as I review our local RiverEast News.

Every week
Mike Thompson writes a solid Editorial
in a compelling voice.
I expect to only add
my hearty sacred
happy secular "Amen!"

Our nearly fearless Editor and Chief
calls for political "ACCOUNTABILITY!"
like...

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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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Every year In Robin Hood Country Nottingham
There in October, they hold. What is known, as the Goose Fair. It's huge. and goes back centuries, straining the Middle Ages, perhaps even longer.
My pals and I back...

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Stars fall under failing skies...stars fall...stars fall...
And sadly...i start to drive.
Through the unremarkable village with its tall 
Georgian Bay window panes, lightless,
devoid of visages; outwardly staring back at my 
Abject countenance with detached contempt and...

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It was September 
Of one thousand 
Nine hundred seven
The end of summer
With apples lying thickly
Under the apple trees
And the smell of Autumn
Covering the grass
Filled with ripe yellow
And orange squash
He was born in a little
Wooden house...

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In a matter of months, we would experience the greatest economic                        ...

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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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This brisk, sunny March morning, I return from delivering my son to his adult daycare van.  

Upon opening The Norwich Times, I delight to read the new Center for Safe Futures "will be taking...

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It was dark out. The stars shone dimly, and the horizon blushed faintly as the birds sang, too cheery for the hour. A chill swept the edges of all the outside world: not cold enough...

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See
   Did You See him when he walked into the large dimly lit room and sit at a table, Alone, on fringe of the dancing and laughter. Did you See his eyes light...

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"A gift is different from something you buy, possessed of meaning outside its material boundaries. You never dishonor the gift." Robin Wall Kimmerer

A social gift,
a gift for compassionate verbal
and nonverbal communication,
a healing gift,
is different from...

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When I first awoke in this hospital, they tell me I had stared straight ahead and never uttered a word. I was in shock for a while, but now Dr. Albright, the therapist assigned to...

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Endless sunflower field 
Rhythmically swaying in the wind
Like lazy ocean wave stretches 
To the distant line of horizon
Touching the edge of the sky
Melting into hot noon brilliance
Boiling all shades of yellow into
One burning brightness of...

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Brazil

As I drove through the heavy snow of Manquiville,
Deep in silence back to Grandfather's house, all frightened faces
Full of solemnly dreams, I remember the smell of the sea.
	The unseen Grandpa's hands, pulling and pulling
	The full...

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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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I was in the shotgun seat
in 1960 Lansing Michigan
headed straight as a harddrive
through ghettoizing "Negra Section"
hunting down our commercial whitebread 
heavenly ThriftyAcres

Wanna be a WalMart ImPlantation
but not Southern enough,
somehow,
to withstand straight-male competition
in fluent White Privileged...

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We could invite many ways
to slice and dice the prism
EcoFeminist.

I first ran into this label
when spoken by a sexual advocate
in the early 70s
at the University of Michigan,
from the mouth of a transgendering ecofeminist
who felt more...

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Sunset

                                  ...

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THE SENTINEL
by
JOHN M. ARRIBAS

					

I took the elevator to the lobby of the small hotel
I’d been here six days the ennui was starting to tell
I’d been sent to cover an international gathering
Sessions so long and dull...

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For so long I have fought my monsters in the war lands. For so long I’ve been by myself in the wake of my chaos. Others tried to stand beside but shortly fell or shortly...

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