Long Heedless Poems

Medieval Poems IV



IN LIBRARIOS
by Thomas Campion
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their whores for exotic positions.



Brut (circa 1100 AD, written by Layamon, an excerpt)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R....

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You've heard that self-unfulfilling prophecy?
"I love humanity--
it's just people I can't stand."

I love healthy humanity--
it's just uppity and/or snooty people I can't stand

I love cooperative humanity--
it's just overly-competitive individuals I can't stand.

Not so distant from,
I...

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The Field
by Rumi 
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Far beyond sermons of right and wrong there's a sunlit field. 
I'll meet you there. 
When the soul lazes in such lush grass 
the world is too...

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Birdsong
by Rumi
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Birdsong relieves
my deepest griefs:
now I'm just as ecstatic as they,
but with nothing to say!
Please universe,
rehearse
your poetry
through me!



I choose to love you in silence
by Rumi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I...

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                                  ...

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“Women Have Loved Before As I Love Now”
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Women have loved before as I love now;
At least, in lively chronicles of the past-
Of Irish waters by a Cornish prow
Or Trojan waters by...

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"Ground Level Entry"

“She fits the bill”,
they say it 
insouciantly

visions of being 
carried in the beak 
of a bilious pelican 

where it builds
its rudimentary nest, 
it uses sticks and debris

no stones, yet,
from irreverence
thrown at it

no higher...

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POTD 30th August 2018 

The gently swaying branches of the old oak should elicit calmness
And yet a sense of foreboding permeates the midnight air
Wild imaginings?  Or did shadows flit across the leaf strewn path?
No...

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 Diary Notes: Lament at Dawn A Year Ago and yet now No Change
				                     ...

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Over yonder pastoral realms, with heaving mounds of green
Birds of variegated colors shine, where.streamlets gleam with opal sheen.
In circles round, fleetfooted Zephyr sweeps the laurelled ground
With footfalls that loom, a sweet scented voluptuous sound
Which gently strike...

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All things that glow and move,
all things that change and pass,
I gather their delight
as in a burning-glass;
Judith Wright

The Queen's Conjurer
1.
'Given to magic and uncanny arts'
'Art mathematical' to make strange works
 Genius of movement artificial
Mechanical scarab...

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The Parrot and the Woodpecker may turn...
    [Sung by TEnicayccal Cellappa]        Translated by T.Wignesan
 
mAnkiliyum marankottiyum         ...

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What is freedom?
The brief period of anarchy between the last tyranny and the next?
Are we free if we cannot see the cage?
Or feel the chains?
What if our masters lengthen our leashes?
Only to tighten their hold...

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   (I love you as a person,
But I hate being your son
I feel intense hatred nevertheless
Because of your doings that has put me in this distress mess...
I'm making progress,
Hardly a true success 
But,...

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Diary Notes: Lament at Dawn
				                             …at the...

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Let hope rely upon your Maginot
for swift retort has choked your Gallic might.
It crushed your will beneath its undertow
as diligence receded in the fight.
Your flailing forces teeter on defeat
and any hint of truce shall be...

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appropriate advice from the THIRUK-KURAL to those* who would be King: VALIARITHAL - Understanding the Wielding of Power, K473 and K474
[*like presidents, prime and chief ministers, dictators or even modern-day "emperors" under the guise of...

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Tyrian Sails Across Stormy Seas Sailed

Tyrian sails across stormy seas sailed,
and a bold prince they deliver
At every port cheerily he was hailed,
as an arrow straight from its quiver
Bade he the pilot to next morn tarry,
as...

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The frontal lobe of Earth's spoken history
bifurcates like Earth's revolving molten axis
co-arising dervish dance
to YangSun's radiant light.

So too my SoulCare
between Left and Right frontal hemispheres
reforms a spinning AlphaPoint of heated human language
for cultural feedback spiral-cycles
of...

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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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(This is all just my opinion,
what I glean from the internet,
Mainstream News, and my imagination – 
do your own research.  If there is any
truth in my observations, this write will
definitely not make me a...

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Angelus Silesius Translations

The rose merely blossoms
and never asks why:
heedless of her beauty,
careless of every eye.
?Angelus Silesius, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

The rose lack reasons
and merely sways with the seasons;
she has no ego
but whoever put...

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Slowly with unstable steps, she approaches.
The room is dank a foreboding intensity permits the air.
She is shaking as the memories wrap their inky hands around her throat.
The terror starts to build as the anguish she'd...

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3 strikes…you’re out!
I’ve given you way too many chances…
Do you expect more?
You left me empty-handed… your insufficiency advances…
3 strikes…you’ve ran out of chances
But I’m kind enough to buy you some more
Or maybe I have some...

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ALERT: A carpenter's son is loose in the Temple
Birds flutter, animals hustle, merchants scream.
The zeal for Jesus' Father's house consumes Him
As the place for foreigners to pray had become a zoo.
 
ALERT: A prophet is...

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