Long Virtue Poems

Lady’s Favor
by Michael R. Burch

May
spring
fling
her riotous petals
devil-
may-care
into the air,
ignoring the lethal
nettles
and may
May
cry gleeful-
ly Hooray!
as the abundance
settles,
till a sudden June
swoon
leave us out of tune,
torn,
when the last rose is left
inconsolably bereft,
rudely shorn
of every device but her thorn.


The...

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Winter
by Michael R. Burch

The rose of love's bright promise
lies torn by her own thorn;
her scent was sweet
but at her feet
the pallid aphids mourn.

The lilac of devotion
has felt the winter hoar
and shed her dress;
companionless,
she shivers—nude, forlorn.

Published...

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Medieval Poems



Wulf and Eadwacer
(Old English circa 990 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My people pursue him like crippled prey.
They'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack.
We are so different!

Wulf's on one island; I'm on...

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ALBERT EINSTEIN POEMS

These are "poems" I created from Albert Einstein quotes, changing a word here and there for the sake of meter and rhyme...



A question that sometimes drives me hazy: 
am I or are the...

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Dream of Infinity
by Michael R. Burch

Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach,
then...

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So, if I understand correctly,
you want to respond to inevitable energy descent
by upgrading incentives for cooperative communication,
positive information expansion,
research and regenerative design,
implementation,
and ecopolitical evaluation strategies?

Yes,
because we achieved current WinWin cooperative communication
and organic networking capacities
by virtue...

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Poems about Poems V

Distances
by Michael R. Burch

There is a small cleanness about her,
as though she has always just been washed,
and there is a dull obedience to convention
in her accommodating slenderness
as she feints at her salad.

She...

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Sonnets LII-LX

The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch

How sweet the endeavors of lips: to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is...

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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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LOVE POEMS V

These are love poems by Michael R. Burch, about life, the dream of love, virtue, a first kiss, a first crush, the birth of a first relationship, the joy of a first love...

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Veronica Franco translations

Veronica Franco (1546-1591) was a Venetian courtesan who wrote literary-quality poetry and prose.

Capitolo 19: A Courtesan's Love Lyric (I) 
by Veronica Franco
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

"I resolved to make a virtue of...

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My most popular poems on the Internet (I)

A number of my poems and translations have gone viral, according to Google, and some have been copied onto hundreds to thousands of web pages. That’s a lot...

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Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar (c. 1460-1530)
loose translation/modernization/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

after William Dunbar

Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue that...

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Villanelle: No man can on his own escape written fate

         For Thiru-Valluvar, the “nameless” author of 
the THIRUK-KURAL

Note: In my previous posts, especially on Canto 38, I...

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Premise
The great poem by the italian poet Dante is the DIVINA COMMEDIA
I have tried to translate in english verses of INFERNO (HELL).
It was a very difficult task. 
I expect criticism.

When just the midway of my...

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Why did He let me break?
Was it for a future's sake?
How did you all get here?
Are we all lost in epic fear?

Keep pressing on, my dusked Dawn
We welcome the sun, that's what we look upon

Do...

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Invocation to the Muse

From the gleaming skin of life’s underbelly, 
sin unreconciled, formed from Nephilim seed,
fleet footed jokers mask pawns into flight;
To the epistle of the Most High.
For in the beginning, the true and only...

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The day was going off, and the brown air
To the terrestrial animals gave rest
For their labors; and only me was there

Just ready to withstand the war at best
Both of the journey and of the torment,
Which...

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Now is going on through a secret way
Between the martyrdoms and the ground wall,
My master, and I behind him to stay.

“Oh highest virtue, who me gently haul
In wicked rounds”, I started, “If you please,
Speak to...

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(Musings of a poet with huge doubts and a fragile faith)

Introduction: Is God A Joke Or Human Vanity?

When close friends die and other’s thoughts are suicidal,
When mankind’s soup du jour is loneliness with anguish	
When mental...

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Was the place where we climbing down the bank
Then arrived, alpine and, for what was there
Such as, that any eyesight would be shrank.

Similar to landslide that in side bare
Before Trento the Adige just smote,
Or for...

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Simon wizard, you poor under his sway
That all things of God, which then of good will
Must be always brides, and you birds of prey

For gold and silver adulterate still,
Now it's time that the trumpet sounds...

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POEMS ABOUT EROS AND CUPID

These are translations of ancient Greek poems about Eros. Eros was the Greek counterpart of the Roman god Cupid. While today we tend to think of Cupid as an angelic cherub...

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In sandy Egypt lived three men
In ancient days when pharaohs reigned
The kingdom of the pyramids,
Osiris and that Isis’ den,
Whom everyone worships and heeds,
Or at least doing so they feigned,
And those gods too blessed them and...

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Dear Bishop Michael Cote, Doctor of Divinity
through pre-historic untold ages
through reborn renaissance stages
through industriously energetic praises
through enlightenment phases
through empowerment dysphasia

Some of us lesser health care practitioners,
good faith social workers,
teachers,
parents and grandparents,
uncles and aunts,
and ecofeminist inter-religious...

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