Long Sapling Poems

Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot sustain,
they wound me so, through my heart keen.

Unless your words heal me hastily,
my heart's wound will remain...

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Evening came and the Harvest Moon was about to rise,
little did Johnny know this night would bring him a surprise…

Johnny lived in a mushroom village with many folks just like him. He carried an over...

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We could speak together,
Decry rabid violence of chronically stressed kids
and young adults acting like kids,
apparently regardless of income or race;
perhaps not of enculturation.

Feeling claustrophobic,
anxious about an unpromising competitive future,
drowning in inch-deep and narrow boxed-in mentoring...

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THE CHIMNEY
The once fine air, refreshens with dust
Between the village horizon and crest
Since the sailing of a death chemical chimney.

Young green plants seedlings growing on slope
Are left to sip these  carcinogenic dusts, sapling
And entwined...

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Kitchen counters alive; the vivid colors of red, green, purple and yellow glass jars. Your garden flourished.
.
Pickled beets mingle boiled eggs; a pretty periwinkle purple.
.
Yellow and purple tinted fingers; dandelions and elderberries distilling; musty aroma...

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Standing all alone in the woods;
eyes shut, I feel the lilting light.
Sun dodges needles through the crown,
beams land on my skin softly so.
Brisk breezes quicken and rustle.
Bristlecone pines ever sway slowly,
while pockets of air blush...

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Cry Wolf

Searchingly,
I peered into your sky painted eyes
without fully understanding what I might find,
but finding that which I might never fully understand.
And now,
My heart is adrift,
like flotsam ,hopelessly adrift.
And the wind that blows is cold,
and...

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A gentle breeze fluttered the curtain I hid behind, as I strained to hear above the pounding of the heart that was trying to break out of my chest, and above the roaring behind the...

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This poem is a special devotion for my mother, who has always been a healing sun for these wintry eyes. Mumma, you're my hope, my strength, my magic and my heartbeat. I'll always find my...

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Sappho Translations XIII by Michael R. Burch

In these translations the fragment numbers are mostly Lobel-Page. All translations are by Michael R. Burch and should be so credited if they are used in any way, shape...

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When my inkless isles 
become drenched 
   with icy wintergreen embers 
of apologetic auroras ~ 
 and l i f e loses its lyrics in lilith's labyrinth, 
  this soul orchestrating in...

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Sappho Translations IX


Sappho, fragment 17
translation by Michael R. Burch

Hear me, Queen Hera, as your delightful festival nears,
you to whom the sons of Atreus performed vows,
those dazzling kings who did such amazing things,
first at Troy, then...

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You're "afraid" to get out and cast a vote, 
but not of rioting in the streets.

You say you champion diversity,
but take away fetal rights to be.
(At the evolving life-point of no return,
(Scientifically))
Would you protect the...

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I took you for your final walk
On that crisp and sunny day
The blanket round your 
shoulders
To keep the chill at bay

We didn't talk the way we 
should
I filled the gaps with platitudes
Those precious moments lost
To...

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In the moorlands of desires, 
I've forever sung choruses of
fertile faith, amidst the flock 
of bleeding birds, sprinkling
heartbeats on lush olive herbs, 
In the dream of retracing their 
scintillating season of beachy spring. 
'Hope' had...

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Under the shade of that proliferous maple tree we'd named
  I'd given you a piece of my naive exuberant heart
   when I handed over a fragment of shimmering red ribbon
  ...

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Interview with a Dying Tree.

       I had bought a mango sapling twenty five years back from a fair and  
        planted...

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Lorca Translations III

Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright and theater director. He was assassinated by Nationalist forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War and his body was never found.

Paisaje (“Landscape”)
by...

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The House on Lake Maggiore

The house on Lake Maggiore was reality, a physical truth, 
my imagination became the artist.

The day has become  a deckchair, gently folding itself up
as my walk leads me into a...

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Towards the Horizon

Sitting in a corner, absorbing the incandescent hue,
A malt for company, awaiting a magical cue,
I often wonder, all these years, where were you?
I reflect upon the days which could have been,
I reminiscent our...

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The hollow tree of a man,                             ...

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Lorca Translations II

Canción del jinete (“Song of the Rider”)
by Federico Garcia Lorca
translation by Michael R. Burch

Cordoba. Distant and lone.
Black pony, big moon,
olives in my saddlebag.
Although my pony knows the way,
I never will reach Cordoba.

High plains,...

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The face behind the harlequins gaze
hides the scars of yesterdays man.
Born in an Attercliffe slum
in the rags of fathers graft,
with a pencil for a voice
stolen from milk mans note. 
. 
A boy in possession of...

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Earth and environment preserved for us,
all bountiful and all lush.
Very pristine, pure and clean,
Clear blue sky and lands jade green.

Languid wings of breeze used to carry,
Scents  of flora and fauna fondly and airy.
Sweet melodies...

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In raw dawn I emerge
crow-thoughts
pecking skull-bone
black as plowed earth.

Farm-stench floods –
dung, hay and blood –
primal musk of life
and death intertwined.
Yet in this first breath
of day there’s a peace
and so stillness
rising from the land
like a satin...

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