Long Rilke Poems

Observance
by Michael R. Burch

Here the hills are old and rolling
carefully in their old age;
on the horizon youthful mountains
bathe themselves in windblown fountains...

By dying leaves and falling raindrops,
I have traced time's starts and stops,
and I have...

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Sonnets XXV-XXXII

Archaischer Torso Apollos (“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...

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Sonnets X-XVI


Archaischer Torso Apollos (“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...

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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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Prose Poems

Something
by Michael R. Burch

Something inescapable is lost?lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight, vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars immeasurable and void. Something uncapturable is...

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New Year Poetry

Auld Lange Syne
by Robert Burns
translation by Michael R. Burch 

Should old acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
And days for which we pine?

For times we shared, my darling,
Days passed,...

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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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Archaischer Torso Apollos ("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...

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This is my translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's second elegy from his Duino Elegies, which he began composing at Duino Castle in 1912. 

Second Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch 

Every angel...

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Deep In Newly Disturbed Soil, Lies My True Love

(  “Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them” – George Eliot.)

Deep in newly disturbed soil, lies my true love
'neath a canopy...

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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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After a short illness keeping me off Soup, and a 50-year refrain from Prose Poetry, I was inspired by a Thomas Merton talk about Rilke to find the courage for this form again.

Shoe Dreams

Is there...

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

Come, you—the last one I acknowledge; return—
incurable pain searing this physical mesh.
As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn
with you; meanwhile, you consume my...

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Liebes-Lied (“Love Song”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How can I withhold my soul so that it doesn’t touch yours?
How can I lift mine gently to higher things, alone?
Oh, I would gladly find...

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?
John Keats - I continue to adore Keats's lush, sensuous language and his odes to beauty, nature, and love, which can deeply resonate with some of my own poetry's yearning and delicacy.

Emily Dickinson - Dickinson's...

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 dodoitsu series (rhymed) 

Winter is taking the reins
speeding past days of autumn -
Jack Frost smears the windowpanes
forefingers and thumb.

You who have no house to own,
too proud to seek charity,
you choose your path all alone
that’s...

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Two spring blooms, paper skinned and delicate
found themselves breaking frozen soil
on opposite sides of the yard.
Easily bruised and blown by the wind
they stole glances at each other through green grasses 
too tall to afford them...

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He begins his poems with a negative tone
But there is a positive affirmation of God’s creation
Indirectly affirms the beauty of divine image
As he laments, “Disguised since childhood”
Though one bears the image of God
One comes of...

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A deep brown collar, lurking from
underneath the green plaid coat.
A smirk on your face, as you turned
the page of your favorite book. “To 
define is to limit”, I feel my maroon
muffler tighten around you in...

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Water

To obey no law, but gravities very 
own and harbor so much life; so 
much death.
Power in every ounce to sway to an 
unheard rhythm danced by only 
streams, 
lakes and rivers. Yes they feel...

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The Broken Fountain Pen Disaster


Underfoot the dropped was-so-lost pen breaks snapping its midnight ink artery to spurt explosively out like some imprisoned force nearly dead but up again sucking in saving air and spread on

dispersing...

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The Broken Fountain Pen Disaster


Underfoot the dropped was-so-lost pen breaks snapping its midnight ink artery to spurt explosively out like some imprisoned force nearly dead but risen sucking in saving air 

while dispersing into freedom...

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My days and nights are tossed.Lost is the meaning of time and the need to wear a watch.
The room has shrunk to the size of a desk. Time grows smaller still, and I get carried...

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