Long Presaged Poems

Come, You
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the...

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Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We cannot know the beheaded god
nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still
the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality
of a lamp lit from within,...

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The Panther
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His weary vision's so overwhelmed by iron bars,
his exhausted eyes see only blank Oblivion.
His world is not our world. It has no stars.
No light. Ten thousand...

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This is my translation of the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Rilke began the first Duino Elegy in 1912, as a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, at Duino Castle, near Trieste on...

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New Year's Eve 2022

Yours truly riddled with social anxiety,
hence (billy me) he will idle away
December 31st, 2022 
sequestered (with the missus) 
hunkered down in his mancave
while madding crowd  
entertains reckons partition of time 
into...

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New Year's Eve 2021

December thirty first
two thousand twenty one countdown
will transparently and seamlessly stream into
simultaneously linkedin January first
two thousand and twenty two,
whereby the Ball a geodesic sphere,
12 feet in diameter,
and weighing 11,875 pounds.

The aforementioned Ball...

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The stars of heaven a story tell,
as on the canvas of the sky
with pictures, bold and intricate,
each night they speak without a word.

Ancient stargazers sketched the signs
that God arranged among the stars.
They traced the circuit...

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Upon exiting the womb...

23,190 days ago,

Yours truly got hashtagged
as the 2,975,075,410TH
person alive on Earth
according to website
https://worldpopulationhistory.org/
my-population-number/.

Come November 15, 2022
(a little more than
four months from now -
actually one hundred twenty days
after today July 11, 2022),
the world's...

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Blessed me as a Girl, why god?why me?
Its me or my weak soul?
Somebody can be so cruel, I didn't understand the semantics of life?
I couldn't resist strength to collide with them.
Was Woefully screaming but nobody...

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I

Hungry earthworms
Forever entombed in the bowels
Of mother earth
Awake

Defy this asceticism and prostrate
For your ultimate destiny
Lies not in the dogmatic 
Steady march along beaten footpaths

Hungry earthworms
These reminiscences of plaintive cooing
They do not placate
Those dethroned, deprived spirits
Of...

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No sooner than we set foot within said domicile
attestation to so called gentleman’s’ agreement with guile
initially infrequently, but incessantly as time elapsed Isle 
never forget (nor will spouse forgive) with rancor and rile 
ceaselessly besieging,...

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Memorial service ~10:00 A.M. October 21st, 2020...
at Cherry Hill, New Jersey Unitarian Fellowship

Boyce Brandon Harris cremains
(approximately one fourth entire contents)
offered, interred, and eulogized
within ‘Tristan’s Pollinator Garden,'
which constitutes minute arboretum
bore witness to immediate family of said...

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Something I have long suspected
Might very well happen is in fact
Already moving full-steam ahead
Towards our seeming desolate shore 

But this bit I might as well confess
Is way out of the extra-ordinary fare
That the poets had...

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Brilliant light and sound show
not disappointing forecasters promised
outstandingly uproarious performance
powerful winds rage
against the machine
embark to score prestigious

chart chopping hit
pliancy of heavy
boughs sorely tested
ear splitting cacophony
presaged coming fury
within safe shelter of B44,

I hunkered down
analogous to brave...

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It happened quickly, not three full days
after the last sturdy leaf of the
flowering linden tree surrendered to
late fall winds.

Snowfall, lots of it. Over a foot
the first time. Shoveling, digging out,
slow traffic, and all those school...

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Were there of night sufficiency to hold 
its chambers shielded from all predators 
of mind that thrust into those walls 
(as she will thrust into her own) 
with reasoned words, 
though she would stay them...

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^
			A Gealic Song

Gneiss. 
	Ancient.
Vying with Earth herself for the Crown of Age.

In the Hebrides
Lie the Stones of Calanais
Stubborn chthonic deities of a common past
Rising up and standing against all.
You
More than a beautiful metaphor 
Of what...

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Those Who...


                  Those who are presaged to selflessly save innocent life

       ...

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