Ho Xuan Huong translations
Ho Xuan Huong (1772-1882) was a risqué Vietnamese poetess. Her verse — replete with nods, winks, double entendres and sexual innuendo — was shocking to many readers of her day and will doubtless remain so to some of ours. Huong has been described as "the candid voice of a liberal female in a male-dominated society." Her output has been called "coy, often bawdy lyrics." More information about the poet follows these English translations of her poems.
Ốc Nhồi ("The Snail")
by Ho Xuan Huong (1772-1882)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The Watergaw
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
Love Poems
These are love poems by Michael R. Burch. Some are poems about love in desert places where Bedouins have learned to do without. The poems include everything from heroic couplets, sonnets and villanelles, to free verse and haiku.
Sonnet: Once (a confirmed bachelor recants)
for Beth
Once when her kisses were fire incarnate
and left in their imprint bright lipstick, and flame,
when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes,
leaving me listlessly sighing her name ...
Ono no Komachi translations
These are my modern English translations of poems by Ono no Komachi.
Watching wan moonlight flooding tree limbs,
my heart also brims,
overflowing with autumn.
—Ono no Komachi (circa 825-900), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Hafez Translations
These are my modern English translations of poems by Hafez aka Hafiz.
The heart is the thousand-stringed lyre
Tuned to the chords of Love.
—Hafez, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
***
Dispensing Keys
by Hafez
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Romantic Poems
These are Romantic poems (with a capital R) that I have written under the influence of feminine beauty and poets like Sappho, e. e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, Kevin N. Roberts, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Dylan Thomas.
She Gathered Lilacs
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
She gathered lilacs
and arrayed them in her hair;
tonight, she taught the wind to be free.
Broken hearts
We fall for pretty faces,
pretty smiles,
looking for that perfect match,
We flirt, text back and forth
thinking we have a little chance,
We have days full of sunshine,
relationships burning in fire and flames,
We take too much risks
wearing our heart to the collarbone,
We choose dates, dates turned moments,
We became insecure and less confident
hugging our deepest fears,
We accept someone new, embrace them
forgetting our last relationship was beyond repairs,
We remember the old flames
Two Songs From a Play
I
I saw a staring virgin stand
Where holy Dionysus died,
And tear the heart out of his side.
And lay the heart upon her hand
And bear that beating heart away;
Of Magnus Annus at the spring,
As though God's death were but a play.
Another Troy must rise and set,
Another lineage feed the crow,
Another Argo's painted prow
Drive to a flashier bauble yet.
The Roman Empire stood appalled:
It dropped the reins of peace and war
When that fierce virgin and her Star
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Tourists
In a strange town in a far land
They met amid a throng;
They stared, they could not understand
How life was sudden song.
As brown eyes looked in eyes of grey
Just for a moment's space,
Twin spirits met with sweet dismay
In that strange place.
And then the mob that swept them near
Reft them away again;
Two hearts in all the world most dear
Knew puzzlement and pain.
They barely brushed in passing by,
A wildered girl and boy,
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Two Words
'God' is composed of letters three,
But if you put an 'l'
Before the last it seems to me
A synonym for Hell.
For all of envy, greed and hate
The human heart can hold
Respond unto the devil's bait
Of Gold.
When God created Gold to be
For our adorning fit,
I little think he dreamed that we
Would come to worship it.
But when you ruefully have scanned
The chronicles of Time,
You'll find that lucre lends a hand
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