Long Skeins Poems

Rejection
a roundel by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your beauty from your heart has so erased
Pity, that it's useless to complain;
For Pride now holds your mercy by a chain.

I'm guiltless, yet my sentence has...

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Medieval Poem V

A Proverb from Winfred's Time
anonymous Old English poem, circa 757-786
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

1.
The procrastinator puts off purpose,
never initiates anything marvelous,
never succeeds, and dies alone.

2.
The late-deed-doer delays glory-striving,
never indulges daring dreams,
never succeeds,...

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Translations of the Oldest English Rhyming Poems

The Rhymed Poem aka The Rhyming Poem aka The Riming Poem
Old English/Anglo-Saxon poem from the Exeter Book, circa 990 AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

(excerpt)
He who granted me life...

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 [Poem read at Sekoto’s inhumation ceremony at the Neuilly-sur-Marne-93 Cemetery, near Paris. Channel 4 in London recorded the reading as they did the funeral rites in the presence of his close relatives come from...

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Some men die to survive

	the Hard endures
the Soft succumbs   stews in juices  reproduces exults
			disappears
the heartless breaks cracks crumbles
							drags
   the Ephemeral down the ravines of the also-ran rivers
								   ...

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I didn't want to offer him my life but discovered it was not mine to give
When he entered my world my heart beat to the rhythm it chose to live
My muse was awakened from many...

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The Heights of Machu Picchu, Canto VIII
by Pablo Neruda
translation by Michael R. Burch

Ascend with me, my American love!

Let’s kiss these mysterious stones together!

The Urubamba’s torrential silver
lures pollen to fly from its golden chalice
while above this...

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No wisdom more canny than the folksome pantun’s peasant proverbials
            Wake! Monde Malais! Wake and note no Sultan whirls as a Sufi
  ...

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Achy with flu, but to tired to drift into a deep sleep, my body stalks the corridors of twilight, moving between being awake and floating on dreams.  Time is a stranger to physics and...

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Written: February 11, 2024
                  ______________________________________

Features: fugacious fascinating beat
I saw smoke, but no flames in sight
I caught a cynosure of...

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I saw the swifts again today,
High on the wing and weaving the crags to the clouds.

I watched them last from my Fall lawn,
Flickering between fantasy and truth,
And whistling their secrets to the wind.  

They’d...

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I like to watch skeins of geese flying in the autumn sky,
And I like the smell of frying bacon and luscious cherry pie!

I like to see the sun tinting Pikes Peak's crown in the early...

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Understandable... the sensible
(three ringed circuitous) logic
to trumpet necessity
each individual moost heed
bedecking, cloaking donning,
ludicrous interloper facial covering,
(I prefer sporting
latest custom made
invisible máscaras faciales),
when commingling amidst madding crowd,

nevertheless coronavirus (COVID-19)
makes laughingstock kickstarting
maniacal paranoid testing yapping
authoritarians blabber ceaselessly
bleak...

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The problem of the inclusive pronoun is still very much a problem for the writer, and needs an accepted solution.  I tried for years with a suggested one of my own, but it never...

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In the realm of shadow where memories are born and die unnaturally,
And stars watch in silence, reflecting celestial nostalgias.
The Moon dresses in the silk of night, preparing for union,
With the night's dew, in a celestial...

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A unicorn travels through the wheat and lays its dreams upon poppy pillows,
Among the echoes of time that resonate in an eternal violet dusk,
Where the sky embraces the sea in a mirror without lid,
And the...

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There's a chill in the mornin' air as autumn in Vermont unfolds.
Splendor is revealed as trees assume their cloaks of reds and golds!
Fodder shocks gleam in the risin' sun and 'punkins' sport a tinge of...

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The autumn winds are rattlin' the leaves of corn stalks in the fields.
The corn has been harvested and the farmers are calculatin' their yields.
Golden, yellow and crimson leaves are strewn along the country lane.
Autumn! ...

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the robin hops from the tips of the rose bush

                         ...

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Autumn approached about a week ago as stealthily as a fox!
The corn has been shucked and the golden fodder stands in shocks.
Luscious apples have been plucked from every supple bough.
Sweet-scented alfalfa for the cattle has...

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'Tis often said that the best things in life are free.
Open your eyes and keen those ears and I think you would agree!
When Old Sol gilds the eastern skies then settles in the west,
We're awed...

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The month of October is a most delightful time of the year.
Though skies at times may be gray and the weather drear,
It proffers so many splendid opportunities for our delight,
Like the glowing hunter's moon casting...

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The British were coming. 
As dawn's cold fingers 
clawed the eastern sky, 
men scurried to their stations, 
all too aware of the rhythmic crump 
of that ugly distant drumming. 

The Threat was inching closer, 
a...

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The languid days of summer passed so fleet - autumn's almost here.
Alas, I've fiddled around and left so many things undone, I fear.
Now, I must hustle about and cease buildin' castles in the sky,
Ere the...

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Scarlett thought she was promised permanent security. 
Satchels of resilience bound her fragile wrists. 
Woodland deities hailed her.
Underworld demons feared her.
The curious townsfolk simply stood in contemplation - 
Inviting epee's gleamed in their eyes 
as...

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