These are poems about shadows, poems about darkness, poems about shades in the form of ghosts and spirits...
Shadows
by Michael R. Burch
Alone again as evening falls,
I join gaunt shadows and we crawl
up and down my room's dark walls.
Up and down and up and down,
against starlight—strange, mirthless clowns—
we merge, emerge, submerge...then drown.
We drown in shadows starker still,
shadows of the somber hills,
shadows of sad selves we spill,
tumbling, to the ground below.
There, caked in grimy, clinging snow,
we flutter feebly, moaning low
for days dreamed once an age ago
when we weren't shadows, but were men...
when we were men, or almost so.
What is life?
The flash of a firefly.
The breath of the winter buffalo.
The shadow scooting across the grass that vanishes with sunset.
—Blackfoot saying, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
As the moon flies west
the flowers' shadows
creep eastward.
—Yosa Buson, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Leaves
like crows’ shadows
flirt with a lonely moon.
—Fukuda Chiyo-ni, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
War
stood at the end of the hall
in the long shadows
—Watanabe Hakusen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Snapshot
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Earth’s least trace of life cannot be erased;
even when you lie underground, it encompasses you.
So, those of you who anticipate the shadows:
how long will the darkness remember you?
Hiroshima Shadows
by Michael R. Burch
The intense heat and light of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb blasts left ghostly shadows of human beings imprinted in concrete, whose lives were erased in an instant.
Hiroshima shadows ... mother and child...
Oh, when will our hearts ever be beguiled
to end mindless war ... to seek peace, reconciled
to our common mortality?
Where We Dwell
by Michael R. Burch
Night within me.
Never morning.
Stars uncounted.
Shadows forming.
Wind arising
where we dwell
reaches Heaven,
reeks of Hell.
Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology)
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.
When last my love left me
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16
The sun was a smoldering ember
when last my love left me;
the sunset cast curious shadows
over green arcs of the sea;
she spoke sad words, departing,
and teardrops drenched the trees.
Last Anthem
by Michael R. Burch
Where you have gone are the shadows falling...
does memory pale
like a fossil in shale
...do you not hear me calling?
Where you have gone do the shadows lengthen...
does memory wane
with the absence of pain
...is silence at last your anthem?
Sharon
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 15
apologies to Byron
I.
Flamingo-minted, pink, pink cheeks,
dark hair streaked with a lisp of dawnlight;
I have seen your shadow creep
through eerie webs spun out of twilight...
And I have longed to kiss your lips,
as sweet as the honeysuckle blooms,
and to hold your pale albescent body,
more curvaceous than the moon...
II.
Black-haired beauty, like the night,
stay with me till morning's light.
In shadows, Sharon, become love
until the sun lights our alcove.
Red, red lips reveal white stone:
whet my own, my passions hone.
My all in all I give to you,
in our tongues’ exchange of dew.
Now all I ever ask of you
is: do with me what now you do.
My love, my life, my only truth!
In shadows, Sharon, shed your gown;
let all night’s walls come tumbling down.
III.
Now I will love you long, Sharon,
as long as longing may be.
In the Twilight of Her Tears
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 19
In the twilight of her tears
I saw the shadows of the years
that had taken with them all our joys and cares ...
There in an ebbing tide’s spent green
I saw the flotsam of lost dreams
wash out into a sea of wild despair ...
In the scars that marred her eyes
I saw the cataracts of lies
that had shattered all the visions we had shared ...
As from a ravaged iris, tears
seemed to flood the spindrift years
with sorrows that the sea itself despaired ...
Musings at Giza
by Michael R. Burch
In deepening pools of shadows lies
the Sphinx, and men still fear his eyes.
Though centuries have passed, he waits.
Egyptians gather at the gates.
Great pyramids, the looted tombs
—how still and desolate their wombs!—
await sarcophagi of kings.
From eons past, a hammer rings.
Was Cleopatra's litter borne
along these streets now bleak, forlorn?
Did Pharaohs clad in purple ride
fierce stallions through a human tide?
Did Bocchoris here mete his law
from distant Kush to Saqqarah?
or Tutankhamen here once smile
upon the children of the Nile?
or Nefertiti ever rise
with wild abandon in her eyes
to gaze across this arid plain
and cry, “Great Isis, live again!”
Dark Twin
by Michael R. Burch
You come to me
out of the sun —
my dark twin, unreal...
And you are always near
although I cannot touch you;
although I trample you, you cannot feel...
And we cannot be parted,
nor can we ever meet
except at the feet.
The Beautiful People
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16
They are the beautiful people,
and their shadows dance through the valleys of the moon
to the listless strains of an ancient tune.
Oh, no ... please don't touch them,
for their smiles might fade.
Don’t go ... don’t approach them
as they promenade,
for they waltz through a vacuum
and dream they're not made
of the dust and the dankness
to which men degrade.
They are the beautiful people,
and their spirits sighed in their mothers’ wombs
as the distant echoings of unearthly tunes.
Winds do not blow there
and storms do not rise,
and each hair has its place
and each gown has its price.
And they whirl through the darkness
untouched by our cares
as we watch them and long for
a "life" such as theirs.
Shadowselves
by Michael R. Burch
In our hearts, knowing
fewer days—and milder—beckon,
still, how are we to measure
that wick by which we reckon
the time we have remaining?
We are shadows
spawned by a blue spurt of candlelight.
Darkly, we watch ourselves flicker.
Where shall we go when the flame burns less bright?
When chill night steals our vigor?
Why are we less than ourselves? We are shadows.
Where is the fire of our youth? We grow cold.
Why does our future loom dark? We are old.
And why do we shiver?
In our hearts, seeing
fewer days—and briefer—breaking,
now, even more, we treasure
this brittle leaf-like aching
that tells us we are living.
Once Upon a Frozen Star
by Michael R. Burch
Oh, was it in this dark-Decembered world
we walked among the moonbeam-shadowed fields
and did not know ourselves for weight of snow
upon our laden parkas? White as sheets,
as spectral-white as ghosts, with clawlike hands
thrust deep into our pockets, holding what
we thought were tickets home: what did we know
of anything that night? Were we deceived
by moonlight making shadows of gaunt trees
that loomed like fiends between us, by the songs
of owls like phantoms hooting: Who? Who? Who?
And if that night I looked and smiled at you
a little out of tenderness . . . or kissed
the wet salt from your lips, or took your hand,
so cold inside your parka . . . if I wished
upon a frozen star . . . that I could give
you something of myself to keep you warm . . .
yet something still not love . . . if I embraced
the contours of your face with one stiff glove . . .
How could I know the years would strip away
the soft flesh from your face, that time would flay
your heart of consolation, that my words
would break like ice between us, till the void
of words became eternal? Oh, my love,
I never knew. I never knew at all,
that anything so vast could curl so small.
Transplant
by Michael R. Burch
You float, unearthly angel, clad in flesh
as strange to us who briefly knew your flame
as laughter to disease. And yet you laugh.
Behind your smile, the sun forfeits its claim
to earth, and floats forever now the same—
light captured at its moment of least height.
You laugh here always, welcoming the night,
and, just a photograph, still you can claim
bright rapture: like an angel, not of flesh—
but something more, made less. Your humanness
this moment of release becomes a name
and something else—a radiance, a strange
brief presence near our hearts. How can we stand
and chain you here to this nocturnal land
of burgeoning gray shadows? Fly, begone.
I give you back your soul, forfeit all claim
to radiance, and welcome grief’s dark night
that crushes all the laughter from us. Light
in someone Else’s hand, and sing at ease
some song of brightsome mirth through dawn-lit trees
to welcome morning’s sun. O daughter! these
are eyes too weak for laughter; for love’s sight,
I welcome darkness, overcome with light.
Shark
by Michael R. Burch
They are all unknowable,
these rough pale men—
haunting dim pool rooms like shadows,
propped up on bar stools like scarecrows,
nodding and sagging in the fraying light . . .
I am not of them,
as I glide among them—
eliding the amorphous camaraderie
they are as unlikely to spell as to feel,
camouflaged in my own pale dichotomy . . .
That there are women who love them defies belief—
with their missing teeth,
their hair in thin shocks
where here and there a gap of scalp gleams like bizarre chrome,
their smell rank as wet sawdust or mildewed laundry . . .
And yet—
and yet there is someone who loves me:
She sits by the telephone
in the lengthening shadows
and pregnant grief . . .
They appreciate skill at pool, not words.
They frown at massés,
at the cue ball’s contortions across green felt.
They hand me their hard-earned money with reluctant smiles.
A heart might melt at the thought of their children lying in squalor . . .
At night I dream of them in bed, toothless, kissing.
With me, it’s harder to say what is missing . . .
Solicitation
by Michael R. Burch
He comes to me out of the shadows, acknowledging
my presence with a tip of his hat, always the gentleman,
and his eyes are on mine like a snake’s on a bird’s—
quizzical, mesmerizing.
He cocks his head as though something he heard intrigues him
(although I hear nothing) and he smiles, amusing himself at my expense;
his words are full of desire and loathing, and although I hear,
he says nothing that I understand.
The moon shines—maniacal, queer—as he takes my hand and whispers
Our time has come . . . and so we stroll together along the docks
where the sea sends things that wriggle and crawl
scurrying under rocks and boards.
Moonlight in great floods washes his pale face as he stares unseeing
into my eyes. He sighs, and the sound crawls slithering down my spine,
and my blood seems to pause at his touch as he caresses my face.
He unfastens my dress till the white lace shows, and my neck is bared.
His teeth are long, yellow and hard. His face is bearded and haggard.
A wolf howls in the distance. There are no wolves in New York. I gasp.
My blood is a trickle his wet tongue embraces. My heart races madly.
He likes it like that.
Vampires
by Michael R. Burch
Vampires are such fragile creatures;
we fear the dark, but the light destroys them . . .
sunlight, or a stake, or a cross—such common things.
Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings,
we heed his voice.
Centuries have taught us:
in shadows danger lurks for those who stray,
and there the vampire bares his yellow fangs
and feels the ancient soul-tormenting pangs.
He has no choice.
We are his prey, plump and fragrant,
and if we pray to avoid him, he prays to find us,
prays to some despotic hooded God
whose benediction is the humid blood
he lusts to taste.
The Wild Hunt
by Michael R. Burch
Few legends have inspired more poetry than those of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. These legends have their roots in a far older Celtic mythology than many realize. Here the names are ancient and compelling. Arthur becomes Artur or Artos, “the bear.” Bedivere becomes Bedwyr. Lancelot is Llenlleawc, Llwch Lleminiawg or Lluch Llauynnauc. Merlin is Myrddin. And there is an curious intermingling of Welsh and Irish names within these legends, indicating that some tales (and the names of the heroes and villains) were in all probability “borrowed” by one Celtic tribe from another. For instance, in the Welsh poem “Pa gur,” the Welsh Manawydan son of Llyr is clearly equivalent to the Irish Mannanan mac Lir.
Near Devon, the hunters appear in the sky
with Artur and Bedwyr sounding the call;
and the others, laughing, go dashing by.
They only appear when the moon is full:
Valerin, the King of the Tangled Wood,
and Valynt, the goodly King of Wales,
Gawain and Owain and the hearty men
who live on in many minstrels’ tales.
They seek the white stag on a moonlit moor,
or Torc Triath, the fabled boar,
or Ysgithyrwyn, or Twrch Trwyth,
the other mighty boars of myth.
They appear, sometimes, on Halloween
to chase the moon across the green,
then fade into the shadowed hills
where memory alone prevails.
Published by Borderless Journal, Celtic Twilight, Celtic Lifestyles, Boston Poetry and Auldwicce
Ibykos/Ibycus Fragment 286, circa 564 BCE
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Come spring, the grand
apple trees stand
watered by a gushing river
where the maidens’ uncut flowers shiver
and the blossoming grape vine swells
in the gathering shadows.
Unfortunately
for me
Eros never rests
but like a Thracian tempest
ablaze with lightning
emanates from Aphrodite;
the results are frightening—
black,
bleak,
astonishing,
violently jolting me from my soles
to my soul.
Dunkles zu sagen (“Expressing the Dark”)
by Ingeborg Bachmann, an Austrian poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I strum the strings of life and death
like Orpheus
and in the beauty of the earth
and in your eyes that instruct the sky,
I find only dark things to say.
The dark shadow
I followed from the beginning
led me into the deep barrenness of winter.
Annual
by Michael R. Burch
Silence
steals upon a house
where one sits alone
in the shadow of the itinerant letterbox,
watching the disconnected telephone
collecting dust ...
hearing the desiccate whispers of voices’
dry flutters,—
moths’ wings
brittle as cellophane ...
Curled here,
reading the yellowing volumes of loss
by the front porch light
in the groaning swing . . .
through thin adhesive gloss
I caress your face.
Snapshots
by Michael R. Burch
Here I scrawl extravagant rainbows.
And there you go, skipping your way to school.
And here we are, drifting apart
like untethered balloons.
Here I am, creating “art,”
chanting in shadows,
pale as the crinoline moon,
ignoring your face.
There you go,
in diaphanous lace,
making another man’s heart swoon.
Suddenly, unthinkably, here he is,
taking my place.
Ghost
by Michael R. Burch
White in the shadows
I see your face,
unbidden. Go, tell
Love it is commonplace;
Tell Regret it is not so rare.
Our love is not here
though you smile,
full of sedulous grace.
Lost in darkness, I fear
the past is our resting place.
Herbsttag (“Autumn Day”)
by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Lord, it is time. Let the immense summer go.
Lay your long shadows over the sundials
and over the meadows, let the free winds blow.
Command the late fruits to fatten and shine;
O, grant them another Mediterranean hour!
Urge them to completion, and with power
convey final sweetness to the heavy wine.
Who has no house now, never will build one.
Who's alone now, shall continue alone;
he'll wake, read, write long letters to friends,
and pace the tree-lined pathways up and down,
restlessly, as autumn leaves drift and descend.
Love Sonnet XI
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
I stalk the streets, silent and starving.
Bread does not satisfy me; dawn does not divert me
from my relentless pursuit of your fluid spoor.
I long for your liquid laughter,
for your sunburned hands like savage harvests.
I lust for your fingernails' pale marbles.
I want to devour your breasts like almonds, whole.
I want to ingest the sunbeams singed by your beauty,
to eat the aquiline nose from your aloof face,
to lick your eyelashes' flickering shade.
I pursue you, snuffing the shadows,
seeking your heart's scorching heat
like a puma prowling the heights of Quitratue.
Love Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
I do not love you like coral or topaz,
or the blazing hearth’s incandescent white flame;
I love you like phantoms embraced in the dark ...
secretly, in shadows, unrevealed & unnamed.
I love you like shrubs that refuse to bloom
while pregnant with the radiance of mysterious flowers;
now thanks to your love an earthy fragrance
lives dimly in my body’s odors.
I love you without knowing—how, when, why or where;
I love you forthrightly, without complications or care;
I love you this way because I know no other.
Here, where “I” no longer exists ... so it seems ...
so close that your hand on my chest is my own,
so close that your eyes close gently on my dreams.
Pan
by Michael R. Burch
... Among the shadows of the groaning elms,
amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves ...
... Once there were paths that led to coracles
that clung to piers like loosening barnacles ...
... where we cannot return, because we lost
the pebbles and the playthings, and the moss ...
... hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair
who never were enchanted, and the stairs ...
... that led up to the Fortress in the trees
will not support our weight, but on our knees ...
... we still might fit inside those splendid hours
of damsels in distress, of rustic towers ...
... of voices heard in wolves’ tormented howls
that died, and live in dreams’ soft, windy vowels ...
Violets
by Michael R. Burch
Once, only once,
when the wind flicked your skirt
to an indiscreet height
and you laughed,
abruptly demure,
outblushing shocked violets:
suddenly,
I knew:
everything had changed ...
Later, as you braided your hair
into long bluish plaits
the shadows empurpled
—the dragonflies’
last darting feints
dissolving mid-air—
we watched the sun’s long glide
into evening,
knowing and unknowing ...
O, how the illusions of love
await us in the commonplace
and rare
then haunt our small remainder of hours.
Ebb Tide
by Michael R. Burch
Massive, gray, these leaden waves
bear their unchanging burden—
the sameness of each day to day
while the wind seems to struggle to say
something half-submerged planks at the mouth of the bay
might nuzzle limp seaweed to understand.
Now collapsing dull waves drain away
from the unenticing land;
shrieking gulls shadow fish through salt spray—
whitish streaks on a fogged silver mirror.
Sizzling lightning impresses its brand.
Unseen fingers scribble something in the wet sand.
The Endeavors of Lips
by Michael R. Burch
How sweet the endeavors of lips—to speak
of the heights of those pleasures which left us weak
in love’s strangely lit beds, where the cold springs creak:
for there is no illusion like love ...
Grown childlike, we wish for those storied days,
for those bright sprays of flowers, those primrosed ways
that curled to the towers of Yesterdays
where She braided illusions of love ...
“O, let down your hair!”—we might call and call,
to the dark-slatted window, the moonlit wall ...
but our love is a shadow; we watch it crawl
like a spidery illusion. For love ...
was never as real as that first kiss seemed
when we read by the flashlight and dreamed.
If You Come to San Miguel
by Michael R. Burch
If you come to San Miguel
before the orchids fall,
we might stroll through lengthening shadows
those deserted streets
where love first bloomed ...
You might buy the same cheap musk
from that mud-spattered stall
where with furtive eyes the vendor
watched his fragrant wares
perfume your breasts ...
Where lean men mend tattered nets,
disgruntled sea gulls chide;
we might find that cafetucho
where through grimy panes
sunset implodes ...
Where tall cranes spin canvassed loads,
the strange anhingas glide.
Green brine laps splintered moorings,
rusted iron chains grind,
weighed and anchored in the past,
held fast by luminescent tides ...
Should you come to San Miguel?
Let love decide.
At Once
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Though she was fair,
though she sent me the epistle of her love at once
and inscribed therein love’s antique prayer,
I did not love her at once.
Though she would dare
pain’s pale, clinging shadows, to approach me at once,
the dark, haggard keeper of the lair,
I did not love her at once.
Though she would share
the all of her being, to heal me at once,
yet more than her touch I was unable bear.
I did not love her at once.
And yet she would care,
and pour out her essence ...
and yet—there was more!
I awoke from long darkness,
and yet—she was there.
I loved her the longer;
I loved her the more
because I did not love her at once.
Drunken Morning, or, Morning of Drunkenness
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Oh, my Beautiful! Oh, my Good!
Hideous fanfare wherein I won’t stumble!
Oh, rack of splendid enchantments!
Huzzah for the virginal!
Huzzah for the immaculate work!
For the marvelous body!
It began amid children’s mirth; where too it must end.
This poison? ’Twill remain in our veins till the fanfare subsides,
when we return to our former discord.
May we, so deserving of these agonies,
may we now recreate ourselves
after our body’s and soul’s superhuman promise—
that promise, that madness!
Elegance, senescence, violence!
They promised to bury knowledge in the shadows—the tree of good and evil—
to deport despotic respectability
so that we might effloresce pure-petaled love.
It began with hellish disgust but ended
—because we weren’t able to grasp eternity immediately—
in a panicked riot of perfumes.
Children’s laughter, slaves’ discretion, the austerity of virgins,
loathsome temporal faces and objects—
all hallowed by the sacredness of this vigil!
Although it began with loutish boorishness,
behold! it ends among angels of ice and flame.
My little drunken vigil, so holy, so blessed!
My little lost eve of drunkenness!
Praise for the mask you provided us!
Method, we affirm you!
Let us never forget that yesterday
you glorified our emergence, then each of our subsequent ages.
We have faith in your poison.
We give you our lives completely, every day.
Behold, the assassin's hour!
Rêvé Pour l'hiver (“Winter Dream”)
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Come winter, we’ll leave in a little pink carriage
With blue cushions. We’ll be comfortable,
snuggled in our nest of crazy kisses.
You’ll close your eyes, preferring not to see, through the darkening glass,
The evening’s shadows leering.
Those snarling monstrosities, that pandemonium
of black demons and black wolves.
Then you’ll feel your cheek scratched...
A little kiss, like a crazed spider, will tickle your neck...
And you’ll say to me: "Get it!" as you tilt your head back,
and we’ll take a long time to find the crafty creature,
the way it gets around...
Dawn
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I embraced the august dawn.
Nothing stirred the palaces. The water lay dead still. Battalions of shadows still shrouded the forest paths.
I walked briskly, dreaming the gemlike stones watched as wings soared soundlessly.
My first adventure, on a path now faintly aglow with glitterings, was a flower who whispered her name.
I laughed at the silver waterfall teasing me nakedly through pines; then on her summit, I recognized the goddess.
One by one, I lifted her veils, in that tree-lined lane, waving my arms across the plain, as I notified the cock.
Back to the city, she fled among the roofs and the steeples; scrambling like a beggar down the marble quays, I chased her.
Above the road near a laurel thicket, I caught her in gathered veils and felt her immense body. Dawn and the child collapsed together at the edge of the wood.
When I awoke, it was noon.
Catullus LXV aka Carmina 65
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Hortalus, I’m exhausted by relentless grief,
and have thus abandoned the learned virgins;
nor can my mind, so consumed by malaise,
partake of the Muses' mete fruit;
for lately the Lethaean flood laves my brother's
death-pale foot with its dark waves,
where, beyond mortal sight, ghostly Ilium
disgorges souls beneath the Rhoetean shore.
Never again will I hear you speak,
O my brother, more loved than life,
never see you again, unless I behold you hereafter.
But surely I'll always love you,
always sing griefstricken dirges for your demise,
such as Procne sings under the dense branches’ shadows,
lamenting the lot of slain Itys.
Yet even amidst such unfathomable sorrows, O Hortalus,
I nevertheless send you these, my recastings of Callimachus,
lest you conclude your entrusted words slipped my mind,
winging off on wayward winds, as a suitor’s forgotten apple
hidden in the folds of her dress escapes a virgin's chaste lap;
for when she starts at her mother's arrival, it pops out,
then downward it rolls, headlong to the ground,
as a guilty blush flushes her downcast face.
Album
by Michael R. Burch
I caress them—trapped in brittle cellophane—
and I see how young they were, and how unwise;
and I remember their first flight—an old prop plane,
their blissful arc through alien blue skies ...
And I touch them here through leaves which—tattered, frayed—
are also wings, but wings that never flew:
like Nabokov’s wings—pinned, held. Here, time delayed,
their features never merged, remaining two ...
And Grief, which lurked unseen beyond the lens
or in shadows where It crept on furtive claws
as It scritched Its way into their hearts, depends
on sorrows such as theirs, and works Its jaws ...
and slavers for Its meat—those young, unwise,
who naively dare to dream, yet fail to see
how, lumbering sunward, Hope, ungainly, flies,
clutching to Her ruffled breast what must not be.
Passport
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
They left me unrecognizable in the shadows
that bled all colors from this passport.
To them, my wounds were novelties—
curious photos for tourists to collect.
They failed to recognize me. No, don't leave
the palm of my hand bereft of sun
when all the trees recognize me
and every song of the rain honors me.
Don't set a wan moon over me!
All the birds that flocked to my welcoming wave
as far as the distant airport gates,
all the wheatfields,
all the prisons,
all the albescent tombstones,
all the barbwired boundaries,
all the fluttering handkerchiefs,
all the eyes—
they all accompanied me.
But they were stricken from my passport
shredding my identity!
How was I stripped of my name and identity
on soil I tended with my own hands?
Today, Job's lamentations
re-filled the heavens:
Don't make an example of me again!
Prophets—
Don't require the trees to name themselves!
Don't ask the valleys who mothered them!
My forehead glistens with lancing light.
From my hand the riverwater springs.
My identity can be found in my people's hearts,
so invalidate this passport!
“The Moon Festival”
by Su Shi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
“Where else is there moonlight?”
Wine cup in hand, I ask the dark sky,
Not knowing the hour of the night
in those distant celestial palaces.
I long to ride the wind home,
Yet dread those high towers’ crystal and jade,
Fear freezing to death amid all those icicles.
Instead, I begin to dance with my moon-lit shadow.
Better off, after all, to live close to earth.
Rounding the red pavilion,
Stooping to peer through transparent windows,
The moon shines benevolently on the sleepless,
Knowing no sadness, bearing no ill...
But why so bright when we sleep apart?
As men experience grief and joy, parting and union,
So the moon brightens and dims, waxes and wanes.
It has always been thus, since the beginning of time.
My wish for you is a long, blessed life
And to share this moon’s loveliness though leagues apart.
Su Shi wrote this famous lyric for his brother Ziyou (1039-1112), when the poet was far from the imperial court.
Wu Tsao aka Wu Zao (1789-1862) was a celebrated lesbian poet whose lyrics were sung throughout China. She was also known as Wu Pinxiang and Yucenzi.
For the Courtesan Ch’ing Lin
by Wu Tsao
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
On the girdle encircling your slender body
jade and coral ornaments tinkle like chimes,
like the tintinnabulations of some celestial being
only recently descended from heaven’s palaces.
You smiled at me when we met
and I become tongue-tied, forgetting how to speak.
For far too long now you have adorned yourself with flowers,
leaning nonchalantly against veiling bamboos,
your green sleeves failing to keep you warm
in your mysterious valley.
I can imagine you standing there:
an unusual girl, alone with her cryptic thoughts.
You exude light like a perfumed lamp
in the lengthening shadows.
We sip wine and play games,
recite each other’s poems.
You sing “South of the River”
with its heartrending verses.
Then we paint each other’s fingernails, toenails and beautiful eyebrows.
I want to possess you entirely:
your slender jade body
and your elsewhere-engaged heart.
Today it is spring
and enmassed mists, vast, cover the Five Lakes.
Oh my dearest darling, let me buy you a scarlet boat
and pirate you away!
Premonition
by Michael R. Burch
Now the evening has come to a close and the party is over ...
we stand in the doorway and watch as they go—
each stranger, each acquaintance, each casual lover.
They walk to their cars and they laugh as they go,
though we know their bright laughter’s the wine ...
then they pause at the road where the dark asphalt flows
endlessly on toward Zion ...
and they kiss one another as though they were friends,
and they promise to meet again “soon” ...
but the rivers of Jordan roll on without end,
and the mockingbird calls to the moon ...
and the katydids climb up the cropped hanging vines,
and the crickets chirp on out of tune ...
and their shadows, defined by the cryptic starlight,
seem spirits torn loose from their tombs.
And we know their brief lives are just eddies in time,
that their hearts are unreadable runes
carved out to stand like strange totems in sand
when their corpses lie ravaged and ruined ...
You take my clenched fist and you give it a kiss
as though it were something you loved,
and the tears fill your eyes, brimming with the soft light
of the stars winking brightly above ...
Then you whisper, "It's time that we went back inside;
if you'd like, we can sit and just talk for a while."
And the hope in your eyes burns too deep, so I lie
and I say, "Yes, I would," to your small, troubled smile.
Published by Borderless Journal (Singapore)
Gacela of the Dark Death
by Federico Garcia Lorca
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I want to sleep the dreamless sleep of apples
far from the bustle of cemeteries.
I want to sleep the dream-filled sleep of the child
who longed to cut out his heart on the high seas.
I don't want to hear how the corpse retains its blood,
or how the putrefying mouth continues accumulating water.
I don't want to be informed of the grasses’ torture sessions,
nor of the moon with its serpent's snout
scuttling until dawn.
I want to sleep awhile,
whether a second, a minute, or a century;
and yet I want everyone to know that I’m still alive,
that there’s a golden manger in my lips;
that I’m the elfin companion of the West Wind;
that I’m the immense shadow of my own tears.
When Dawn arrives, cover me with a veil,
because Dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me;
then wet my shoes with a little hard water
so her scorpion pincers slip off.
Because I want to sleep the dreamless sleep of the apples,
to learn the lament that cleanses me of this earth;
because I want to live again as that dark child
who longed to cut out his heart on the high seas.
Insomnia
by Marina Tsvetaeva
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
In my enormous city it is night
as from my house I step beyond the light;
some people think I'm daughter, mistress, wife ...
but I am like the blackest thought of night.
July's wind sweeps a way for me to stray
toward soft music faintly blowing, somewhere.
The wind may blow until bright dawn, new day,
but will my heart in its rib-cage really care?
Black poplars brushing windows filled with light ...
strange leaves in hand ... faint music from distant towers ...
retracing my steps, there's nobody lagging behind ...
This shadow called me? There's nobody here to find.
The lights are like golden beads on invisible threads ...
the taste of dark night in my mouth is a bitter leaf ...
O, free me from shackles of being myself by day!
Friends, please understand: I'm only a dreamlike belief.
It's Halloween!
by Michael R. Burch
If evening falls
on graveyard walls
far softer than a sigh;
if shadows fly
moon-sickled skies,
while children toss their heads
uneasy in their beds,
beware the witch's eye!
If goblins loom
within the gloom
till playful pups grow terse;
if birds give up their verse
to comfort chicks they nurse,
while children dream weird dreams
of ugly, wiggly things,
beware the serpent's curse!
If spirits scream
in haunted dreams
while ancient sibyls rise
to plague nightmarish skies
one night without disguise,
as children toss about
uneasy, full of doubt,
beware the Devil's lies . . .
it's Halloween!
El Dorado
by Michael R. Burch, circa age 16
It's a fine town, a fine town,
though its alleys recede into shadow;
it's a very fine town for those who are searching
for an El Dorado.
Because the lighting is poor and the streets are bare
and the welfare line is long,
there must be something of value somewhere
to keep us hanging on
to our El Dorado.
Though the children are skinny, their parents are fat
from years of gorging on bleached white bread,
yet neither will leave
because all believe
in the vague things that are said
of El Dorado.
The young men with outlandish hairstyles
who saunter in and out of the turnstiles
with a song on their lips and an aimless shuffle,
scuffing their shoes, avoiding the bustle,
certainly feel no need to join the crowd
of those who work to earn their bread;
they must know that the rainbow's end
conceals a pot of gold
near El Dorado.
And the painted “actress” who roams the streets,
smiling at every man she meets,
must smile because, after years of running,
no man can match her in cruelty or cunning.
She must see the satire of “defeats”
and “triumphs” on the ambivalent streets
of El Dorado.
Yes, it's a fine town, a very fine town
for those who can leave when they tire
of chasing after rainbows and dreams
and living on nothing but fire.
But for those of us who cling to our dreams
and cannot let them go,
like the sad-eyed ladies who wander the streets
and the junkies high on snow,
the dream has become a reality
—the reality of hope
that grew too strong
not to linger on—
and so this is our home.
We chew the apple, spit it out,
then eat it "just once more."
For this is the big, big apple,
though it’s rotten to the core,
and we are its worm
in the night when we squirm
in our El Dorado.
The Composition of Shadows
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, ...
sounds’ shadows mass beneath bright glass
like singing voles curled in a maze
of blank white space. We touch a face—
long-frozen words trapped in a glaze
that insulates our hearts. Nowhere
can love be found. Just shrieking air.
The Composition of Shadows (II)
by Michael R. Burch
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,
the blood’s debate
within the heart. Here, resonant,
sounds’ shadows mass
against bright glass,
within the white Labyrinthian maze.
Through simple grace,
I touch your face,
ah words! And I would gaze
the night’s dark length
in waning strength
to find the words to feel
such light again.
O, for a pen
to spell love so ethereal.
One of the Flown
by Michael R. Burch
Forgive me for not having known
you were one of the flown—
flown from the distant haunts
of someone else’s enlightenment,
alighting here to a darkness all your own . . .
I imagine you perched,
pretty warbler, in your starched
dress, before you grew bellicose . . .
singing quaint love’s highest falsetto notes,
brightening the pew of some dilapidated church . . .
But that was before autumn’s
messianic dark hymns . . .
Deepening on the landscape—winter’s inevitable shadows.
Love came too late; hope flocked to bare meadows,
preparing to leave. Then even the thought of life became grim,
thinking of Him . . .
To flee, finally,—that was no whim,
no adventure, but purpose.
I see you now a-wing: pale-eyed, intent, serious:
always, always at the horizon’s broadening rim . . .
How long have you flown now, pretty voyager?
I keep watch from afar: pale lover and voyeur.
Photographs
by Michael R. Burch
Here are the effects of a life
and they might tell us a tale
(if only we had time to listen)
of how each imperiled tear would glisten,
remembered as brightness in her eyes,
and how each dawn’s dramatic skies
could never match such pale azure.
Like dreams of her, these ghosts endure
and they tell us a tale of impatient glory . . .
till a line appears—a trace of worry?—
or the wayward track of a wandering smile
which even now can charm, beguile?
We might find good cause to wonder
as we see her pause (to frown?, to ponder?):
what vexed her in her loveliness . . .
what weight, what crushing heaviness
turned her auburn hair a frazzled gray,
and stole her youth before her day?
We might ask ourselves: did Time devour
the passion with the ravaged flower?
But here and there a smile will bloom
to light the leaden, shadowed gloom
that always seems to linger near . . .
And here we find a single tear:
it shimmers like translucent dew
and tells us Anguish touched her too,
and did not spare her for her hair’s
burnt copper, or her eyes’ soft hue.
Mending Glass
by Michael R. Burch
In the cobwebbed house—
lost in shadows
by the jagged mirror,
in the intricate silver face
cracked ten thousand times,
silently he watches,
and in the twisted light
sometimes he catches there
a familiar glimpse of revealing lace,
white stockings and garters,
a pale face pressed indiscreetly near
with a predatory leer,
the sheer flash of nylon,
an embrace, or a sharp slap,
. . . a sudden lurch of terror.
He finds bright slivers
—the hard sharp brittle shards,
the silver jags of memory
starkly impressed there—
and mends his error.
They Take Their Shape
by Michael R. Burch
“We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning ...”—George W. Bush
We will not forget ...
the moments of silence and the days of mourning,
the bells that swung from leaden-shadowed vents
to copper bursts above “hush!”-chastened children
who saw the sun break free (abandonment
to run and laugh forsaken for the moment),
still flashing grins they could not quite repent ...
Nor should they—anguish triumphs just an instant;
this every child accepts; the nymphet weaves;
transformed, the grotesque adult-thing emerges:
damp-winged, huge-eyed, to find the sun deceives ...
But children know; they spin limpwinged in darkness
cocooned in hope—the shriveled chrysalis
that paralyzes time. Suspended, dreaming,
they do not fall, but grow toward what is,
then grope about to find which transformation
might best endure the light or dark. “Survive”
becomes the whispered mantra of a pupa’s
awakening ... till What takes shape and flies
shrieks, parroting Our own shrill, restive cries.
Her Slender Arm
by Nakba, an alias of Michael R. Burch
Her slender arm, her slender arm,
I see it reaching out to me!—
wan, vulnerable, without a charm
or amulet to guard it. "FLEE!"
I scream at her in wild distress.
She chides me with defiant eyes.
Where shall I go? They scream, “Confess!
Confess yourself, your children lice,
your husband mantis, all your kind
unfit to live!”
See, or be blind.
I cannot see beyond the gloom
that shrouds her in their terrible dungeon.
I only see the nightmare room,
the implements of torture. Sudden
shocks contort her slender frame!
She screams, I scream, we scream in pain!
I sense the shadow-men, insane,
who gibber, drooling, "Why are you
not just like US, the Chosen Few?"
Suddenly she stares through me
and suddenly I understand.
I hear the awful litany
of names I voted for. My hand
lies firmly on the implement
they plan to use, next, on her children
who huddle in the corner. Bent,
their bidden pawn, I heil "Amen!"
to their least wish. I hone the blade
“Made in America,” their slave.
She has no words, but only tears.
I turn and retch. I vomit bile.
I hear the shadow men’s cruel jeers.
I sense, I feel their knowing smile.
I paid for this. I built this place.
The little that she had, they took
at my expense. Now they erase
her family from life’s precious book.
I cannot meet her eyes again.
I stand one with the shadow men.
The Fog and the Shadows
adapted from a novel by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
“I began to realize the fog was similar to the shadows.”
I began to realize that, just as the exact shape of darkness is a shadow,
even so the exact shape of fog is disappearance
and the exact shape of a human being is also disappearance.
At this moment it seemed my body was vanishing into the human form’s final state.
After I arrived here,
it was as if the danger of getting lost
and the desire to lose myself
were merging strangely inside me.
While everything in that distant, gargantuan city where I spent my five college years felt strange to me; and even though the skyscrapers, highways, ditches and canals were built according to a single standard and shape, so that it wasn’t easy to differentiate them, still I never had the feeling of being lost. Everyone there felt like one person and they were all folded into each other. It was as if their faces, voices and figures had been gathered together like a shaman’s jumbled-up hair.
Even the men and women seemed identical.
You could only tell them apart by stripping off their clothes and examining them.
The men’s faces were beardless like women’s and their skin was very delicate and unadorned.
I was always surprised that they could tell each other apart.
Later I realized it wasn’t just me: many others were also confused.
For instance, when we went to watch the campus’s only TV in a corridor of a building where the seniors stayed when they came to improve their knowledge. Those elderly Uyghurs always argued about whether someone who had done something unusual in an earlier episode was the same person they were seeing now. They would argue from the beginning of the show to the end. Other people, who couldn’t stand such endless nonsense, would leave the TV to us and stalk off.
Then, when the classes began, we couldn’t tell the teachers apart.
Gradually we became able to tell the men from the women
and eventually we able to recognize individuals.
But other people remained identical for us.
The most surprising thing for me was that the natives couldn’t differentiate us either.
For instance, two police came looking for someone who had broken windows during a fight at a restaurant and had then run away.
They ordered us line up, then asked the restaurant owner to identify the culprit.
He couldn’t tell us apart even though he inspected us very carefully.
He said we all looked so much alike that it was impossible to tell us apart.
Sighing heavily, he left.
Keywords/Tags: shadow, shadows, the dark, darkness, shades, ghosts, specters, spirits, hauntings