Long Unmourned Poems

Sappho Translations V by Michael R. Burch


Sappho, fragment 23
translation by Michael R. Burch

I long helplessly for love.
Gazing into your eyes not even Hermione compares.
Who is your equal?
I compare you only to goldenhaired Helen among mortal...

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King of Lies

It's all about you,
Isn't it?
Always, no matter what the disaster
You've most recently caused.
It always comes back to you,
How badly you're treated 
By the Fake News
(By which we mean the real truth,
As reported by...

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                                  ...

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On glossy pages generally reserved for stars of stage and screen
golden calves lounging casually on cushioned chaises, deities of decadence
sunlight streamed in black and white through filthy, filmy windows 
as flies converged in the corners...

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They suddenly barged in their tanks and trucks
Covered in various armaments of war.
Their vehicles droned, piercing the silence,
Cutting deep wounds in that fertile land,
And desecrating the once sacred ground.

Rockets flew like meteors across the skies;
Bullets...

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the flowers he is holding are just one of the reminders
of that grief he is holding on so rigidly,
prompting a picture of his wife, sniffing the same flowers
as she walked the aisle, he smiles stupidly.

now...

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Inspired by "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a leaf that falls,
unmourned, to the distant ground
I paused when I heard a far bird's calls
Magic I'd missed looking down--
royal Autumn...

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Certain men have risen to claim dominance over society,
Their actions attest to barren depths of indifference,
Caring not that those who are unable to fight back
Are trodden beneath the heavy boots of oppression;
Artistry, vision unrecognized by...

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SEPTEMBER   SUNSET    OVER     ST.  PETERSBURG


Final fling  of color and movement from the sun
Celebration of  life  before it’s   done.
Bits and pieces...

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I live under dark lonely clouds
Pregnant with acid rain 
Burn into my skin, every drop a blister 
I call out your name in whispers
Become I a wraith that haunts its own house
Floating through a labyrinth...

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It flew past my window early this morn
  A winged creature with a singular horn
    Of so many things did this creature warn 

Of once-towering figures, their reputations now shorn
 ...

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ICE     FUNERAL


My River Smolenka has been free of ice now for weeks, but today 
I saw the flat smoothly-flowing river  steaming   grey  - 

Bearing  remnant ...

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But fiction you are, our Juliet, unborn,
mere humans find love so hard to portray, 
thus leading many to their death, astray,
fear not a Romeo is born each day.
Childless children be not to death forsworn. 
Why...

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