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
......
A Wife In London (December, 1899)
by Thomas Hardy
I--The Tragedy
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the City lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold on fold
Like a waning taper
The street-lamp glimmers cold.
A messenger's knock cracks smartly,
Flashed news is in her hand
......
The Changing Light
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The changing light
at San Francisco
is none of your East Coast light
none of your
pearly light of Paris
The light of San Francisco
is a sea light
an island light
And the light of fog
blanketing the hills
......
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,
......
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,
......
