Poetry: Michael R. Burch

Michael R. Burch

Michael R. Burch's poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into 14 languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, and set to music, from swamp blues to opera, by 27 composers.

Love Is Not Love                                                             

for Beth

 

Love is not love that never looked

within itself and questioned all,

curled up like a zygote in a ball,

throbbed, sobbed and shook.

 

(Or went on a binge at a nearby mall,

then would not cook.)

 

Love is not love that never winced,

then smiled, convinced

that soar’s the prerequisite of fall.

 

When all

its wounds and scars have been saline-rinsed,

where does Love find the wherewithal

to try again,

endeavor, when

 

all that it knows

is: O, because!

 

Just Smile

We’d like to think some angel smiling down

will watch him as his arm bleeds in the yard,

ripped off by dogs, will guide his tipsy steps,

his doddering progress through the scarlet house

to tell his mommy “boo-boo!” only two.

 

We’d like to think his reconstructed face

will be as good as new, will often smile,

that baseball’s just as fun with just one arm,

that God is always Just, that girls will smile,

not frown down at his thousand livid scars,

that Life is always Just, that Love is Just.

 

We just don’t want to hear that he will shave

at six, to raze the leg hairs from his cheeks,

that lips aren’t easily fashioned, that his smile’s

lopsided, oafish, snaggle-toothed, that each

new operation costs a billion tears,

when tears are out of fashion.

                                                O, beseech

some poet with more skill with words than tears

to find some happy ending, to believe

that God is Just, that Love is Just, that these

are Parables we live, Life’s Mysteries …

 

Or look inside his courage, as he ties

his shoelaces one-handed, as he throws

no-hitters on the first-place team, and goes

on dates, looks in the mirror undeceived

and smiling says, “It’s me I see. Just me.”

 

He smiles, if life is Just, or lacking cures,

Your pity is the worst cut he endures.

But hack him down and still he’ll always rise,

lifting his smile to the sun or the star-filled skies.

 

Come!

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?

 

When my womb has conformed to the chastity

your anemic Messiah envisioned for me,

will you finally be pleased that my sex was thus rendered

unpalatable, disengendered?

 

And when those strange loathsome organs that troubled you so

have been eaten by worms, will the heavens still glow

with the approval of God that I ended a maid—

thanks to a spade?

 

And will you come to visit my grave, I wonder,

in the season of lightning, the season of thunder?

 

“Come!” won fifth place in the big Writer’s Digest 2012 Rhyming Poetry Contest, out of over 9,500 overall contest entries.

"The Wife's Lament"—also known as "The Wife's Complaint"—is an Anglo-Saxon/Old English poem from the Exeter Book, the oldest extant English poetry anthology. The Angles and Saxons were Germanic tribes and the poem is generally considered to be an elegy in the tradition of the German frauenlied ("woman's song"). Its main theme is the mourning of a lost or unrequited love, or perhaps a more general complaint about women being dominated by chauvinistic men and thus being forced to live subservient existences. (The poem may be considered an early feminist text: perhaps a very early precursor of The Handmaid's Tale.) The Exeter Book has been dated to 960-990 AD, so the poem was written no later than the tenth century, perhaps earlier. It may be the oldest extant English poem by a female poet although its authorship remains unknown.

 

The Wife's Lament

Anglo-Saxon poem circa 960-990 AD or earlier

loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

 

I draw these dark words from deep wells of wild grief,

dredged up from my heart, regretful & sad.

I recount wrenching seizures I've suffered since birth,

both ancient and recent, that drove me mad.

 

I have reaped, from my exile-paths, only pain

here on earth.

 

First, my Lord forsook his kinfolk —left,

crossed the seas' shining expanse, deserted our tribe.

Since then, I've known only loneliness:

wrenching dawn-griefs, despair in wild tides ...

Where, oh where can he be?

 

Then I, too, left—a lonely, lordless refugee,

full of unaccountable desires!

But the man's kinsmen schemed to estrange us,

divide us, keep us apart.

 

Divorced from hope, unable to embrace him,

how my helpless heart

broke! ...

 

Then my Lord spoke:

"Take up residence here."

I had few acquaintances in this alien land, none close.

I was penniless, friendless;

Christ, I felt lost!

 

Eventually

I believed I'd met a well-matched man—one meant for me,

but unfortunately

                            he

was ill-starred, unkind,

with a devious mind,

full of malicious intentions,

plotting some crime!

 

Before God we

vowed never to part, not till kingdom come, never!

But now that's all changed, forever—

our marriage is done, severed.

 

Thus now I must hear,

                  far and near,

early and late,

contempt for my mate.

 

Then naysayers bade me, "Go, seek repentance in the sacred grove,

beneath the great oak trees, in some root-entangled grotto, alone."

 

Now in this ancient earth-hall I huddle, hurt and oppressed—

the dales are dark, the hills wild & immense,

and this cruel-briared enclosure—a hellish abode!

 

How the injustice assails me—my Lord's absence!

Elsewhere on earth lovers share the same bed

while I pass through life, half dead,

in this dark abscess where I wilt with the heat, unable to rest

or forget the tribulations of my life's hard lot.

 

A young woman must always be

stern, hard-of-heart, unmoved, full of belief,

enduring breast-cares, suppressing her own feelings.

She must always appear cheerful,

even in a tumult of grief.

 

Now, like a criminal exiled to a distant land,

groaning beneath insurmountable cliffs,

my weary-minded lover, drenched by wild storms

and caught in the clutches of anguish, moans and mourns,

reminded constantly of our former happiness.

 

Woe be it to them who abide in longing!

"The Husband's Message" is an Old English (Anglo-Saxon) poem from the Exeter Book, the oldest extant English poetry anthology, circa 960-990 AD. The poem may or may not be a reply to "The Wife's Lament" from the same collection. "The Husband's Message" is generally considered to be an Anglo-Saxon riddle, but its primary focus is persuading a wife or fiancé to join her husband or betrothed and fulfill her promises to him.

 

The Husband's Message

anonymous Old English poem, circa 960-990 AD

loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

 

See, I unseal myself for your eyes only!

I sprang from a seed to a sapling,

waxed great in a wood,

                            was given knowledge,

was ordered across saltstreams in ships

where I stiffened my spine, standing tall,

till, entering the halls of heroes,

                       I honored my manly Lord.

 

Now I stand here on this ship’s deck,

an emissary ordered to inform you

of the love my Lord feels for you.

I have no fear forecasting his heart steadfast,

his honor bright, his word true.

 

He who bade me come carved this letter

and entreats you to recall, clad in your finery,

what you promised each other many years before,

mindful of his treasure-laden promises.

 

He reminds you how, in those distant days,

witty words were pledged by you both

in the mead-halls and homesteads:

how he would be Lord of the lands

you would inhabit together

while forging a lasting love.

 

Alas, a vendetta drove him far from his feuding tribe,

but now he instructs me to gladly give you notice

that when you hear the returning cuckoo's cry

cascading down warming coastal cliffs,

come over the sea! Let no man hinder your course!

 

He earnestly urges you: Out! To sea!

Away to the sea, when the circling gulls

hover over the ship that conveys you to him!

 

Board the ship that you meet there:

sail away seaward to seek your husband,

over the seagulls' range,

                           over the paths of foam.

For over the water, he awaits you.

 

He cannot conceive, he told me,

how any keener joy could comfort his heart,

nor any greater happiness gladden his soul,

than that a generous God should grant you both

to exchange rings, then give gifts to trusty liege-men,

golden armbands inlaid with gems to faithful followers.

 

The lands are his, his estates among strangers,

his new abode fair and his followers true,

all hardy heroes, since hence he was driven,

shoved off in his ship from these shore in distress,

steered straightway over the saltstreams, sped over the ocean,

a wave-tossed wanderer winging away.

 

But now the man has overcome his woes,

outpitted his perils, lives in plenty, lacks no luxury,

has a hoard and horses and friends in the mead-halls.

 

All the wealth of the earth's great earls

now belongs to my Lord ...

                                He only lacks you.

 

He would have everything within an earl's having,

if only my Lady will come home to him now,

if only she will do as she swore and honor her vow.

---

Setu, December 2024