death

These are longer poems and longish poems by Michael R. Burch.

These Hallowed Halls
by Michael R. Burch

a young Romantic Poet mourns the passing of an age...

I.

A final stereo fades into silence
and now there is seldom a murmur
to trouble the slumber
of these ancient halls. 

I stand by a window where others have watched
the passage of time—alone,
not untouched.

These are poems about sunset, poems about the song going down and things irretrivably lost, poems about regret. 
 

Sunset
by Michael R. Burch
       
for my grandfather, George Edwin Hurt Sr., on the day he departed this life

Between the prophecies of morning
and twilight's revelations of wonder,
the sky is ripped asunder.

The moon lurks in the clouds,
waiting, as if to plunder
the dusk of its lilac iridescence,

and in the bright-tentacled sunset
we imagine a presence
full of the fury of lost innocence.

Bound
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 14-15

Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of the streetlamp casts strange shadows to the ground,
I have lost what I once found
in your arms.

Now it is winter—the coldest night.
And as the light of distant Venus fails to penetrate dark panes,
I have remade all my chains
and am bound.

Published as “Why Did I Go?” in my high school journal the Lantern in 1976. I have made slight changes here and there, but the poem is essentially the same as what I wrote in my early teens.

These are translations of ancient Greek epitaphs inscribed on steles (tombstones and other monuments) by the ancient Greeks in remembrance of their dead. I use the term "after" for my translations because they are loose translations and/or interpretations rather than word-for-word translations.

The Seikilos Epitaph
by Michael R. Burch, after Seikilos of Euterpes

1.
Shine, while you live;
blaze beyond grief,
for life is brief
and Time, a thief.

These are poems about sinking, poems about drowning, poems about loss, and poems about new discoveries we sometimes make while feeling lost...

Sinking
by Michael R. Burch

for Virginia Woolf

Weigh me down with stones…
fill all the pockets of my gown…
I’m going down,
mad as the world
that can’t recover,
to where even mermaids drown.

Door Mouse
by Michael R. Burch

These are poems about Palestinian children and their mothers...

Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

Epitaph for a Palestinian Girl
by Michael R. Burch

Find in her pallid, dread repose,
no hope, alas!, for a human Rose.

who, US?
by Michael R. Burch

jesus was born
a palestinian child
where there’s no Room
for the meek and the mild

These are my modern English translations of ancient Greek poems and epigrams by Sophocles, including antinatalist poems and epigrams.

It’s a hundred times better not be born;
but if we cannot avoid the light,
the path of least harm is swiftly to return
to death’s eternal night!
Sophocles (circa 497-406 BC), Oedipus at Colonus, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Not to have been born is best,
and blessed
beyond the ability of words to express.
—Sophocles, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hugh MacDiarmid wrote "The Watergaw" in a Scots dialect. I have translated the poem into modern English to make it easier to read and understand. A watergaw is a fragmentary rainbow. 

The Watergaw
by Hugh MacDiarmid
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These are free verse poems I have written over the last half century, and also a few rhyming poems about free verse.

Reason Without Rhyme
by Michael R. Burch

I used to be averse
to free verse,
but now I admit
YOUR rhyming is WORSE!

But alas, in the end,
it’s all the same:
all verse is unpaid
and a crying shame.

***

Prose Poem: The Trouble with Poets
by Michael R. Burch

These are prose poems and experimental poems.

Prose Poem: The Trouble with Poets
by Michael R. Burch

This morning the neighborhood girls were helping their mothers with chores, but one odd little girl went out picking roses by herself, looking very small and lonely. Suddenly the odd one refused to pick roses anymore because it occurred to her that being plucked might “hurt” them. Now she just sits beside the bushes, rocking gently back and forth, weeping and consoling the vegetation!