night

These are poems about poetry, poems about writing, poems about the process of composition...

The Composition of Shadows (I)
by Michael R. Burch

“I made it out of a mouthful of air.”—W. B. Yeats

We breathe and so we write; the night
hums softly its accompaniment.
Pale phosphors burn; the page we turn
leads onward, and we smile, content.
    
And what we mean we write to learn:
the vowels of love, the consonants’
strange golden weight, each plosive’s shape—
curved like the heart. Here, resonant,...

These are poems about war and other calamities such as school shootings and floods...

War is Obsolete
by Michael R. Burch

War is obsolete;
even the strange machinery of dread
weeps for the child in the street
who cannot lift her head
to reprimand the Man
who failed to countermand
her soft defeat.

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.

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

"Nightfall" is a poem I wrote for my fellow poet and friend Kevin Nicholas Roberts, shortly after his death. 

Nightfall
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts

Only the long dolor of dusk delights me now,
     as I await death.
The rain has ruined the unborn corn,
         and the wasting breath
of autumn has cruelly, savagely shorn
               each ear of its radiant health.
As the golden sun dims, so the dying land seems to relinquish its vanishing wealth.

These are villanelles by Michael R. Burch.

Remembering Not to Call
by Michael R. Burch

a villanelle permitting mourning, for my mother, Christine Ena Burch

The hardest thing of all,
after telling her everything,
is remembering not to call.

Now the phone hanging on the wall
will never announce her ring:
the hardest thing of all
for children, however tall.

These are poems for fathers and grandfathers, written by Michael R. Burch.

Sunset
by Michael R. Burch
       
This poem is dedicated to my grandfather, George Edwin Hurt Sr.

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.

These are poems about fall, falls and falling, whether in love or literally ...

Free Fall
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel
where suns revolve around an axle star ...
Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours.
Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel.

These are early poems I write as a boy starting around age elven, then as a teenager in high school and during my first two years of college.

Huntress
by Michael R. Burch

after Baudelaire