Long Garland Poems

Where Does the Butterfly Go?
by Michael R. Burch

for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba

Where does the butterfly go
when lightning rails,
when thunder howls,
when hailstones scream,
when winter scowls,
when nights compound dark frosts with snow ...
Where...

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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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Sharing my translation of a famous poem (Sadharan Meye) written by Rabindranath Tagore, who won Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. It's one of his story-like poems, written in Bengali, which is one of the...

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Sonnets LXXI-LXXX

Because You Came to Me
by Michael R. Burch

Because you came to me with sweet compassion
and kissed my furrowed brow and smoothed my hair,
I do not love you after any fashion,
but wildly, in despair.

Because you...

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Because the charity of my native place
Obliged me, the broken branches I the picked up
Them giving back him, who was to debase.

Then we finally reached where had to leap
From the second turn to third, and...

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* For J.K. Rowling *

                 ~ 

now, deliberate your hearing
     to bring back the pages...

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Sponsor: Carol Eastman

Long before Christmas had become a jolly folklore,
I met a grandfatherly man...
He was clean shaven, tiny and crabby,
And always wore a floppy black suit, his name was Mr. Atnas.

See, I was at such...

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Patience
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

If you refuse to speak, I will fill my heart with your silence and endure it.
I will remain still and wait like the night through its starry vigil
with...

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(A call for the lights to dim as a single spotlight illuminates the legend Judy Garland, who is center stage. She wears a faded housecoat as her beautiful, brandy brown eyes hold a lifetime of...

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Scent Of Paddy Flower

                               ...

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FIRST MOVEMENT (Minor Key)

Times such as these test body soul and mind
So should our thoughts be pain and dark confined
Or loosed to concentrate on brighter things
Like furry puppies, flowers and girls on swings

In this bright...

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What is Christmas?          
Written: By Tom Wright
1999

A time of many sights to see, 
Of tinsel, garland and wreath's so fair.
Of hundreds of bulbs upon a tree,
With...

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The victim list keeps growing

But no one really cares

The gristmill claims another one

Keep your hands in and don't stare

Hollywood is the golden land

The eternal silver screen

But many souls are lost here

A lot of greats or...

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Through the hushed whisper of the breeze
Flowing through the majestic circling pine trees
I sense that I have stepped
Into a sacred hallowed space

A GARDEN OF ROSES

A heady perfume hits the senses
Euphoric, Exhilarating, Enticing, Ethereal comes to...

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This is my translation of Rabindranath Tagore's famous poem "Nidrita". Rabindranath Tagore (1861- 1941) was a Bengali poet, writer, music composer, and painter from Indian subcontinent. He reshaped Bengali literature and music, and Indian art...

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SMELLING

                 Specific smell recall reminiscences.
              ...

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GARLAND
By Kate H. Stark


It happened while practicing my violin. 

I practiced at home on a seat near the door.
I suddenly felt a huge urge to explore.  

The bluebirds were soaring up high in the...

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Might God Exist if Truth’s a Friend?

Is the faith God exists a faint hint that One might,
does belief (that One doesn’t) suggest God’s not real, (1)
aren’t both vain (those who hate, those who worship a...

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Everybody got a Hollywood life story
to tell
More meat on the bone
give juicier bites 
to sell
Nobody ever turns in a tarnished silver screenplay
Those warts and mistakes
get Photoshop casting couch edited away
Baby Jane rude attitude don’t make...

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Glowing days that were once red-cheeked and ripe with promise,
Are narrowing like tall candles in a church window,
Tapering from the golden stand and the sturdy base,
To the glorious flame and the ever fading light.
The final...

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Glowing days that were once red-cheeked and ripe with promise,
Are narrowing like tall candles in a church window,
Tapering from the golden stand and the sturdy base,
To the glorious flame and the ever fading light.
The final...

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In her soul she exposes naked memories and lust for life

          A rebel conceived in a flash of pure passion

      ...

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An evanescent bouquet of skewed briars,
is how a tinsel laden tawdry essence wickedly unfolds,
scuppered signpost to my fetid human compost,
faint light pendant on soul crushed quantum migrant,
who might chortle at vivid veil flimsy vacuum,
skirt recklessly...

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 " Misunderstood 
 by my own metaphors, 
traversing the ivory webs 
 of your cunning twilight ~
which tried to mute those
feminine laments within me, 
  I've metamorphosed 
 to a colourless caterpillar, 
yearning...

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These are modern English translations of poems by the German poets  Ingeborg Bachmann, H. Distler and Johann Georg Jacobi.



“Song”
by Johann Georg Jacobi
translation by Michael R. Burch

Friend, tell me where the violet fled,
so lately gaily...

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