love

These are my modern English translations of epigrams by ancient poets like Homer, Rumi and Seneca.

Elevate your words, not their volume. Rain gros flowers, not thunder.
—Rumi, translation by Michael R. Burch

For the gods have decreed that unfortunate mortals must suffer, while they themselves are sorrowless.
—Homer (circa 800 BC), Iliad 24.525-526, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These are my modern English translations of poems by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.

I Loved You
by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I loved you ... perhaps I love you still ...
perhaps for a while such emotions may remain.
But please don’t let my feelings trouble you;
I do not wish to cause you further pain.

These are heretical poems about Christian concepts such as heaven, hell and salvation. In the past I have published such poems under the heading "Heresy Hearsay."

Less Heroic Couplets: Funding Fundamentals
by Michael R. Burch

“I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.” — Mark Twain

for Beth

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 scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach?

Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage
on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage?
Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too,
have dreamed of infinity . . . windswept and blue.

Love has a Southern flavor: honeydew,
ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle’s spout
we tilt to basking faces to breathe out
the ordinary, and inhale perfume ...

Love’s Dixieland-rambunctious: tangled vines,
wild clematis, the gold-brocaded leaves
that will not keep their order in the trees,
unmentionables that peek from dancing lines ...

Love cannot be contained, like Southern nights:
the constellations’ dying mysteries,
the fireflies that hum to light, each tree’s
resplendent autumn cape, a genteel sight ...

Nothing can surpass
The tight hug of a close friend
On a particularly hard day

When I shall end my days on this earth,
hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die.
The soul, denies its divine heritage in life
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go away,
the silent world of shadows is coming.
And if the Roads are blocked and Barbed wire rampant everywhere,
hold fast to dreams,
dreams are the mystics messengers of freedom that come within our heart and call us in secret,
A soul rose on this earth and walked its chosen path to fill her hands with morning songs.

i’m looking for the face i had before the world was made
I was the primordial flaring forth, the gravitational waves,
the whirling galaxies, and the exploding supernovas that would become stars and planets.
I was the steaming planet Earth, the bacteria awash in the sea, and the early eukaryotes and multicellular animals.
I exploded in the Cambrian explosion, stumbled onto land, walked with dinosaurs,
saw trees and flowers appear, walked upright in Africa, and walked on the moon.

The moon shone bright that night

Beautiful and full.
I can still picture it.
It was magical the way the light danced.
It swallowed every star in the sky
In its majestic glow.

Tonight, however, the moon is gone.
I don’t know where it went.
I wish it would come back
To light up the darkness like it once did
But wherever it’s gone, I hope it’s happier there.

Her Candle

So many candles I’ve never burned.
A marriage candle,
two first communion candles from my kids,
a bicentennial candle,
millennium candle.
So many candles I’ve never burned.

Her candle I’ve burned for over twenty years,
not every day, but most every day.
A memory of what once was,
of what we had
me and her,
her candle.
Originally voluptuously large,
beautifully ornate,
burning bright hot and fast.
We were young then.