Fog Poems
In A London Drawingroom
by George Eliot
The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke.
For view there are the houses opposite
Cutting the sky with one long line of wall
Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch
Monotony of surface & of form
Without a break to hang a guess upon.
No bird can make a shadow as it flies,
For all is shadow, as in ways o'erhung
By thickest canvass, where the golden rays
Are clothed in hemp. No figure lingering
......
The City In Which I Loved You
by Li-Young Lee
And when, in the city in which I love you,
even my most excellent song goes unanswered,
andI mount the scabbed streets,
the long shouts of avenues,
and tunnel sunken night in search of you...
That I negotiate fog, bituminous
rain rining like teeth into the beggar's tin,
or two men jackaling a third in some alley
weirdly lit by a couch on fire, that I
......
The Plunge
by Ezra Pound
I would bathe myself in strangeness:
These comforts heaped upon me, smother me!
I burn, I scald so for the new,
New friends, new faces,
Places!
Oh to be out of this,
This that is all I wanted
- save the new.
And you,
......
The Voyage Of The Mayflower (Dedicated To The American Sons And Daughters Of The American Revolution)
by Baron Norman Sylvester Vo
Where truly doleful was the sight
Sad and mournful parting To see what sights and sobs and prayers
Did sound among them looking for tomorrow What tears did enthusiasm from every eye
And pithy speeches pierced each heart with sorrow But ye tide which stays for no man
Calling them away that were thus loathe
To depart to a foreign land Thy reverend Pastor falling down on his
Knees with watery cheeks commended
Them with most fervent prayer And there at the river "text"
Ezra 8"21 I proclaimed a fast
That we might humble ourselves before
......
Calamiterror (Section Vi)
by George Barker
1
Meandering abroad in the Lincolnshire meadows day
Day and day a month perhaps, lying at night lonely,
The early September evening administering a mystery,
The moon executing its wavering sleight of hand, I sense the
Advent of the extraordinary event, the calamiterror,
Turn and encounter the mountain descending upon me
The moment of terror flashes like dead powder
Revealing the features of the mass as mine.
......
English Translations of Uyghur Poems by Michael R. Burch
by Michael R. Burch
These are modern English translations of Uyghur poems by Michael R. Burch, an American translator, editor and publisher of Holocaust and Nakba poetry.
Perhat Tursun (1969-) is one of the foremost living Uyghur language poets, if he is still alive. Tursun has been described as a "self-professed Kafka character" and that comes through splendidly in poems of his like "Elegy." Unfortunately, Tursun has been "disappeared" into a despicable Chinese "reeducation" concentration camp where extreme psychological torture is the norm. According to a disturbing report he was later "hospitalized."
Elegy
by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
"Your soul is the entire world."
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
......
Foghorn
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
I was an inscrutable, capricious mystery writer, like a pure mystery of days;
And I had composed best selling novels, like westering sun's scarlet phase.
An unparalleled passion for writing, had for quite long been the motivation,
Behind novels which captured hearts, like pink clouds, drifting in formation.
My office desk faced the picture window, near the border of riotous blooms;
And sunny views enriched often eager eyes, owing to birds of many plumes.
Friends were a forever force in my life, like the natural floods of floundering,
......
A November Night
by Sara Teasdale
There! See the line of lights,
A chain of stars down either side the street --
Why can't you lift the chain and give it to me,
A necklace for my throat? I'd twist it round
And you could play with it. You smile at me
As though I were a little dreamy child
Behind whose eyes the fairies live. . . . And see,
The people on the street look up at us
All envious. We are a king and queen,
Our royal carriage is a motor bus,
......
Spring Night
by Sara Teasdale
The park is filled with night and fog,
The veils are drawn about the world,
The drowsy lights along the paths
Are dim and pearled.
Gold and gleaming the empty streets,
gold and gleaming the misty lake,
The mirrored lights like sunken swords,
Glimmer and shake.
......
From The Woolworth Tower
by Sara Teasdale
Vivid with love, eager for greater beauty
Out of the night we come
Into the corridor, brilliant and warm.
A metal door slides open,
And the lift receives us.
Swiftly, with sharp unswerving flight
The car shoots upward,
And the air, swirling and angry,
Howls like a hundred devils.
Past the maze of trim bronze doors,
......
