Long Goethe Poems

"The Strange Case of F.T."



They say the dead don’t talk
the stories I have calculated
to deliver a saving grace 
confessional shared amongst 
my equal peers, or so I deem 
you somewhat sometimes seem,
less than me, you...

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No Mark
by Michael R. Burch

A wave implodes, 
impaled upon
impassive rocks...

this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear...

you are leaving
and the ungrieving
winds demur...

telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before...

here where you have...

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ETERNAL RECURRENCE*


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“I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before and
 I hope to return a thousand times after.”  GOETHE 
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1.

Once upon a time, 
The Lord...

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"The Faces of Man"



The faces of Man
transformative 
held in the hand 
of Mephistopheles 

blood sells white and red
pontificating with two fingers

consuming greed for 
want of everything
they meld into the
curves of their crooked bends

he’s come to...

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Unquotable quotes: Poets, Poetasters and Platos – XXXVI

     For James McAuley – in remembrance of a memorable week in Cardiff 1965 

The greatest poet ever is NOT Homer, Lao Tse, Ovid,...

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"Angels & Demons"




The Soul never sleeps
battered and lonely, the lesson 
Life spent in The Hard Sell

Soft-served you become
melting Insomnia 
mouth sucking a loaded gun

blue ribbonned and veined
pulsing electricity 
from heart to lung to brain

you’re a...

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Too much to know, I just don't know it
As I fumble around, just a humble poet 
Frustrated as I watch unfurl a show
I just don't know it, too much to know

Answers are near, in the...

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REINCARNATION

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“I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before and
 I hope to return a thousand times after.” GOETHE 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
1.

Each soul an ambassador was and is...

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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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Please note that this work is meant to follow in Epic Form and will not follow commonly used grammatical rules found in Prose, such as, not following proper paragraph use. Because it is an Epic...

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Reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno,
In gloom cries today’s time: O there’s no scope
For whoso lives, abandon all the hope.
Maybe he’d reasons enough to think so.

Yet, if body’s in need of oxygen,
Human spirit too such life-force no...

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Speak
by Faiz Ahmad Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Speak, while your lips are still free.
Speak, while your tongue remains yours.
Speak, while you're still standing upright.
Speak, while your spirit has force.

See how, in the bright-sparking forge,...

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The Fisher
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
translation by Michael R. Burch

The river swirled and rippled;
nearby an angler lay,
and watched his lure with a careless eye,
like any other day.
But as he watched in a strange half-dream,
he saw...

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Gefunden (“Found”)
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Into the woodlands,
alone, I went.
Seeking nothing,
my sole intent.

But I saw a flower
deep in the shade
gleaming like starlight
in a still glade.

I reached down to pluck it
when...

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“To the Moon”
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Scattered, pole to starry pole,
glide Cynthia's mild beams,
whispering to the receptive soul
whatever moonbeams mean.

Bathing valley, hill and dale
with her softening light,
loosening from earth’s frigid chains
my...

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Limericks croisés : Once a Mother Professor and Daughter
      
     for Farid & Zafir

Once (a) Mother Professor and Daughter
Came to Paris to see a Poet Mister
He...

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Prometheus
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

obscure Your heavens, Zeus, with a nebulous haze!
and, like boys beheading thistles, decapitate oaks and alps.

yet leave me the earth with its rude dwellings
and my hut...

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Far from having a nascent thought that envelops my rabid self,
Like inside of an accurate Swiss watch that had been given -
A present to presidents and diplomats from the 70’s era,
Memories in the kaleidoscope of...

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I find myself agreeing a lot with Goethe lately…
yes, I think it would be fair 
to say I spend as much time on top of the world…
as I do floundering in the depths of despair.

On...

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Written: August 09, 2023,                     Why Are We Here Poetry Contest
     ...

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ON LOOKING AT SCHILLER’S SKULL
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Here in this charnel-house full of bleaching bones,
like yesteryear’s
fading souvenirs,
I see the skulls arranged in strange ordered rows.

Who knows whose owners might...

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These are modern English translations of the "Xenia" epigrams written in collaboration by the German poets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, plus an elegy Goethe wrote for Schiller...

These are selected XENIA epigrams with...

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for Eric Mottram

           "Nur wenn das Herz erschlossen,
            Dann ist die Erde schön."
 ...

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Something is very wrong here

A world monopoly, based not on human life but on financial and corporate power

Money is one of the most socially paralysing structures humanity has ever endured


“ None are more hopelessly enslaved...

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Today I kissed a girl.
We kissed, in eternal meaning,
Her arms around my waist, 
mine coiled around her neck.
We said goodnight, and sleep tight,
my last words. I scanned my hand,
remembering her feel, petit, taught,
Like a most...

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