Voltaire Translations
This is my modern English translation of a French poem by Voltaire, one of my all-time favorite writers. The poem is followed by two translations of epigrams by Voltaire.
Les Vous et Les Tu (“You, then and now”)
by Voltaire
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The LEVELER
These are poems about time, mortality, death, decay and loss ...
The Leveler
by Michael R. Burch
The nature of Nature
is bitter survival
from Winter’s bleak fury
till Spring’s brief revival.
The weak implore Fate;
bold men ravish, dishevel her ...
till both are cut down
by mere ticks of the Leveler.
Published by The Lyric, The Aurorean, Tucumcari Literary Review, Romantics Quarterly and in a YouTube video by Asma Masooma
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The Shrinking Season
These are poems about the passage of time, aging, mortality and death.
The Shrinking Season
by Michael R. Burch
With every wearying year
the weight of the winter grows
and while the schoolgirl outgrows
her clothes,
the widow disappears
in hers.
Published by Angle, Poem Today (featured poem), Heartfelt Death Poems, Girls and Goblins and Madly Jane
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Distances
by Michael R. Burch
Poems about Time, Aging, Death and Loss
These are poems I have written about time, mortality, aging, death and loss.
Thirty
by Michael R. Burch
Thirty crept upon me slowly
with feline caution and a slowly-twitching tail ...
How patiently she waited for the winds to shift!
Now, claws unsheathed, she lies seething to assail
her helpless prey.
Modern Charon
by Michael R. Burch
COME!
These are poems about coming together, or failing to come together due to misunderstandings, alienation, divisions, a loss of interest, or simply the passage of time affecting human relationships …
Come!
by Michael R. Burch
Will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,
in the season of lightning, the season of thunder,
when I have lain so long in the indifferent earth
that I have no girth?
EPIGRAMS II
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
THIS WORLD OF DEW …
In their haiku the Oriental masters of the form frequently used dew as a metaphor for the transience of life. Some of these poets have used dew metaphorically in a jisei (a type of death poem sometimes called a “zen death poem”) … but then I discovered to my surprise that I had used dew in similar ways quite frequently in my own poetry …
This world?
Moonlit dew
flicked from a crane’s bill.
— Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
A Moment
In between the rain
The bright blue sky shows its face
Just for a moment
Love And Time
As when I saw it long ago;
Down the dark walk with shadows spread
I wander slow.
The tangled sunlight, cold and clear,
Steals frost-white through the boughs around.
There is no warmth of summer here,
No summer sound.
Darnet and nettle, as I pass,
Choke the dim ways, and in the bowers
Gather the weeds and the wild grass
Instead of flowers.
O life! O time! O days that die!
O days that live within the mind!
Here did we wander, she and I,
Together twined.
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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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