Poetry

Evergreen into Ivory White Poems by Julia Webster

by 

Tread Softly

      
      Tread softly for the night is but
      a prelude to the day
      And all that lives must die
      For thus it is as we've heard say
      So many times before.
      Before? the end of the beginning
      Which itself is only spinning to Infinity
      Divinity is but a name for good thought
      Transferred into deeds
      Where one man counts the cost
      The other's praying for his needs
      Stop!..A thought
      Listen!...A bird is singing somewhere
                                             in the Universe.
      Poor thoughts, poor empty thoughts.
      How can I say ' I love you?'
      What's in a word?
      Just frailty.

      One, two ,three, four, five ,six ,seven
      All good people go to Heaven
      But I think otherwise and I'd advise that 
      You do too
      Wouldn't you advise someone that
      Hell's by far a better place
      And that a misplaced feeling of                      disgrace is relatively unimportant
      Oughtn't one to think so?
      No I suppose you wouldn't, couldn't
      I like to think a little differently
      Not follow in the crowd , eh?
      Tread softly, you may say,
      Have it your way.


       A devil, black and smoky,
       Breathing fumes of concentrated                   orange juice through cold-pudding                 nostrils
       What's wrong with that?
       Don't tell me you don't like him
       None of that!
       I suppose you'd paint a better?
       Fetter him in garlic, would you
       Could you?    

        Tread softly 
        For the night has come and dying is
        Out of tune
        And all the people on the earth are                Gazing at the moon
        For soon her light will out
        And shouts of anguish then will spill
        the air
        And everywhere will be a place too                small
        And anywhere will be the devil's fool
        And stars will burst and thirst
        for more good deeds to fill up History
        And soft bright eyes will dim
        And then the earth will lose its spin
        And fighting chaos raging for a                                                                          decade
         Will streak the skies with noble deeds
         And stars will burst and thirst for                   More good deeds to fill up History
         And then....only Time
         Not space but Time
         Running, walking ,speeding
         Slowing ,
         Straight, bent, Lent.
         Time without space
         And nothing more.

          A drop of sun upon a leaf
          Warm rays spraying silver on the seas
          A fan of light beating colours into                  flowers
          And hours upon hours upon hours..
          Tread softly....tread softly...    
         


Flight of the Dove
            
            The tree stands in the lonely field.
            It is raining in sleep- filled rivers.
            Do not hate, do not love.

            beyond hope or caring, sleep or                      sloth
            Dreams deride the thing which is
            Whole world's subside and we,
            Who think we know what suffering                                                                         is
            Cannot abide the murmuring of the                                                              dove.
            We who do not hate, we who do not                                                                     love.
            For us the barren fields are soaked
                                                            in  blood.
            Send up the cry!   God is dead!
            Only beware the fleeing of the dove.

            Have you seen her?
            Flashing blue across the river?
            Did you call out to her?
            Splash of film over the river.
            Catching sight of her wings of taut                                                                   gold
            Did your heart of a sudden grow                                                                             old?
            As she sliced the sun into pale-                                                  white ivory stalks
            By the water's edge, disrupting the
                                            moor-hen's song,
            Belong, belong! belong, Belong!

             
            But what are you doing here,old                                                                     man
            Fouling the greenways?
            Mouth of pomegranate, stench of 
                                     tears gone sour,
            How could you have tasted the                      Forbidden fruit
            At this ungodlike hour?
            You were cast in too strange a                                                                 mould
            A million years of shadow have                      Trespassed behind your eyes
            How could you taste the light
                                              of your eyes?
             Rains you heed not, nor the                                                           wind's outrage,
              But poach at ease beside the                                                  blood-lit streams
             Not hating, not loving
             But tell me, what will you do
             When she comes, robed in mist?
             At the first hint of dawn,
             Will you see her, even in                                                                  dreams?
             Will you stay silent as she drops
             To her pale death in the foam
             Jagged rock of white mist,                               Plummeting down through
             the air's crystal streams
             Lost to the sunrise
             Staining the day with new gold
             As the sun's rivers melt her                                                                      through
             Will she touch you?
             You who are so old?
             Will you reach out to feel that                         Warm rush of feathers
             Blue-green-scarlet-gold?
             Or are you too old, too old?
             As the waters reflect back her                                                 causeless song
             Will you trace those pyramids of 
                                                                light
             Treading sapphire rings
                                                  into the mud?
    
         

Ode to a Drug Addict
         
       
        The great scape of Heaven

       Is tortured with images of Death
   
       And the night sky.


       Owls swoop in the twilight world 

       Where Keats went mad

       For Beauty 's treacherous eye. 


       Ode to a fool 

       Transfixed by the painting 

       Of some great pig of a man

       Eating a fly.


       Tempestuous nights and dawns of 

        Eclipses 

        Fighting the otherwhere and the

        Why.

        I

        Screech at you from the rooftops 

        Over the bridge,  driven wild

        Inside my head


        Hammer the bed into white sheets

        Grasp cold on 

        Nothing

        Outstare the stars to white lead. 


       And running,

       Hand you the piece of dust 

       From which I fled. 
    


       Evergreen into Ivory white



Evergreen into ivory white
The curlew calls
The morbid manufacturers of day
Attend the passing funeral
Of those who decay
Slowly with time.
The bird rustles in the hedgerow
Hear its mating call
At close of day
the flight of swallows return
No matter where.

The passing shepherd summons the sheepdog
The daffodils burst out in gold
My lover's out there in the cold

The short mist comes
The gap between heaven and earth
And all obscurity
No greater love than this
Will
You
Grant
Me
A
Short
Space 
For
Breath

The galleon ship enshrouded in mist
White walls surround the drowned sailor
Shipwrecked
In white water
On the turf of dreams

The bird flying calls 
The seamen look up 
It is not a white albatross
It is I turning about
Into this white pool
The shoreline crinkles into powder
Tiny and remote
Flying high, the day recedes
Into this ivory-white

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
Julia Webster studied English & Drama at Exeter University then later studied Integrated Health Sciences at Westminster. Her first play written in 1972 entitled “The Object of the Game” was performed at The Little Theatre, Barbican , Plymouth and was likened by the well known Harvey Crane critic of the South West to works by Pinter and Ionesco. She began writing puppet plays for children and performed at various Albion fairs throughout the U.K. and was selected to attend The Children’s Festival in Austria by Arabella Churchill. She also wrote poetry since her teens and has composed many songs for voice guitar, violin and piano accompaniment which have been performed in various venues across the U.K. and also in India. In 1979 she met her teacher Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rimpoche and has been a student of his and Dzogchen teachings since then. She currently lives in West London with her family and teaches piano and also practices cranio sacral therapy.

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Teetering Toward Sattva & Further Poems by Kalpita Pathak

by 
Teetering Toward Sattva

My friend’s mother would tell him, I created 
you and I can destroy you, as though, like Parvati
with Ganesh, she had literally made him
from a mixture of earth and her perspiration, brought
him to life with her breath. Śaivasampradāyaḥ believe 
Shiva is the creator, preserver, and destroyer
of the cosmos. Does that mean mothers

are his avatāra and children their miniature
multiverses? I wouldn’t know. I’m not a mother. Mine
may have been a god to me when I was little
(it’s likely she was) but I remember her 
as my universe. One I destroyed over and over
with the choices I made, huddled and weeping
and bereft, my days-old sweat a blend of scotch

and cigarettes and dirt from the alleys where I
crouched for decades. Now those years have passed
and so has she. Neither creator nor destroyer,
she preserved her dreams for/in me and I live them 
with her hands, callused, dry-darkened
at the knuckles, soft, cool. They wash away the grime
so I can live for today. So I can live for us both. 
So I can live.


Anteyesti
to Anay


Your body burns
as your mother weeps
her son into a letter.
I read it, edges 
fluttering in the summer 
wind like wings, like the ashes 
we scatter
in the canyon’s river. She asks
why you wanted to melt
into memory, fleeting 
desert snow beneath
the sun of our hot grief.
And in that brutal 
light, she begs 
for rain to swoop down
and flood her cracked earth.


(… As We Know It)
  Reset: Kritayuga Begins Again


When the apocalypse
comes what becomes
of the astronaut who floats
in the space station and sees
the sun as it really is – a silvery
white flare, incandescent
as fireworks arching over
our greening blue Earth?

Kalpita Pathak is an autistic poet, novelist, and advocate with a passion for research and sensory-rich details. Her work tends to explore the perseverance of hope in a sometimes despairing world, with a little dark humor and magic added to the mix. She received the James Michener Fellowship for her MFA in creative writing and has taught at both the college level and in school programs for kids from three to eighteen. She has recently been published in Mediterranean Poetry.  

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Mini Poems from Bekah Steimel

by 
Sheep Dreams

My sheep stumble down the plank
  and jump ship
crashing into waters whisking with every shark
that ever detected the drunken cologne
  of my blood

PLACE SETTING

Where you live when you are not where you are living, and by living, I mean residing.  
And by live, I’m referencing the space constructed of memory and curiosity.  And by curiosity, 
I speak of the galaxy where dead wishes can’t be piled like bodies. They float seamlessly, 
snag your eyes with a twinkle of a wink. A location as unattainable as those aspirations you 
gifted pulse and game plan. Then suffocated, ripped to portions, and ingested slowly. Well, shit.

The setting of a play, a place, the actors are not all actors, you are writer, director, knowing 
it will never be produced.

       FIN

Ghosted

I ghosted myself
or am I a ghost to myself?
Haunting my leftovers, haunted by what
I left over in a geography
without space or proof.

Hushing Heroes

I’ve been reading my heroes wrong
I’ve been reading my heroes bedtime stories
A collection of heroes 
is a herd of one’s own insecurities
I’m rocking both to sleep

bekahsteimel
 

Bekah Steimel is an internationally published poetic person who was “mostly dead, slightly alive” on VV ECMO life support in 2019 from double lung failure (get your flu shot! And, COVID vaccine as well!). An artist reporting back from the other side. Developing Chance Books LLC. She can be found online at bekahsteimel.com and followed @BekahSteimel.

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The Rain-Wet Rats. More Poems from RW.Haynes

by 
1]
The Rain-Wet Rats
 
She bathed in cold fire which softly sterilized
Her fitful thoughts circling constantly
Back to what gets lost, what set free, 
Gently startled, but not at all surprised.
The cold front rattles in with peevish rain
Concealed by darkness in the morning chill
But nudging at the mind as hostile specters will,
Cold drops rattling like a fatal chain.
 
Can she be easy regulating the fates
Of two dozen dirty peasants with staring eyes
And rusty pitchforks, furious at lies,
Shrieking in the rain outside her gates?
 
Is risk or safety the best choice to make?
The rain outside keeps rattling like a snake.
 
The rafters of civilization broke that day,
And all the rain-wet rats nimbly raced
Away like greyhounds, all order displaced,
And she ducked aside to hide out of the way.
Thunder crashed, as it were, and she
Smiled secretly and thought of my face
Aping consternation ludicrously.
 
2]
Symbolist Gunslinger Purges His Vocabulary
 
Lovely ladies, decked with smiles and flowers,
Dissolve all war and ugliness generously,
Gently repudiating suspicion, hostility,
Disarming all the cowboys’ macho powers.
Let sunshine warm where desert heat once dried.
Let kindness soothe the pain of outraged minds
And cool the excessive heat that burns and blinds.
Let understanding leave rough men satisfied.
For this is a magic, a witchcraft you yield,
Medea, Medusa, Miranda, Antigone,
Criseyde, Duessa, at times ferociously,
And Judith, and the fair witch I once met
Upon the meads, whose ring I wear within
My blood-curdled heart, and will wear when
Chariots descend to collect my fatal debt.
Lovely ladies, let the world spin away
Its grief, let conflict fire our blessed sunlight,
Let the right simplicity be ours today,
And the right words bless our witless dreams tonight.
 
3]
Jukebox Catullus Hums and Strums
 
I can’t stop playing Banquo’s ghost,
And blood runs everywhere each time I twitch,
And somewhere my corpse is bleeding in a ditch,
And you’re still indifferent to who loves you most
Despite this commitment, this dramatic dedication
Here on these boards where happy endings hide
From murdered noblemen with broken hearts inside
And no luck in erotic conversation.
May I venture an aside, though I should leave the stage?
Let no ghost be dishonored, or his staring eyes
Will plunder your heart in midnight surprise.
Enough.  The mad Queen calms the murderer’s rage.
The curtain never falls for the players in this trade;
We wait to spring the traps the poet made.
 
4]
The Right Reply for Second-Hand Fear
“Now time’s Andromeda on this rock rude…”
			--Hopkins
 
A delicate matter prevented her revenge:
Madame Alving was, at that time, at least,
(Delicious pause) Andromeda waiting for the beast,
Long-legged bait a gate to unhinge,
A passage of a champion of the stage,
Sic semper tyrannis the cry of the day,
Cooing doves flapping wings to fly away,
And the old monster’s dilapidated rage,
Bursts forth though in need of upholstery,
Roaring his regrettably wheezy roar
To remind us what monsters are onstage for,
And everyone fake-quakes, all but she,
For she smiles somewhat palely with that fire in her eyes,
And waves a hand defensively without fear,
For she knows who and what is scary here
And what is God’s truth and what the Devil’s lies.
That steady fire grows, its intensity stays,
However much your maudlin monster weighs.

 

 
R. W. Haynes, Professor of English at Texas A&M International University, has published poetry in many journals in the United States and in other countries. As an academic scholar, he specializes in British Renaissance literature, and he has also taught extensively in such areas as medieval thought, Southern literature, classical poetry, and writing. Since 1992, he has offered regular graduate and undergraduate courses in Shakespeare, as well as seminars in Ibsen, Chaucer, Spenser, rhetoric, and other topics. In 2004, Haynes met Texas playwright/screenwriter Horton Foote and has since become a leading scholar of that author’s remarkable oeuvre, publishing a book on Foote’s plays in 2010 and editing a collection of essays on his works in 2016. Haynes also writes plays and fiction. In 2016, he received the SCMLA Poetry Award ($500) at the South Central Modern Language Association Conference In 2019, two collections of his poetry were published, Laredo Light (Cyberwit) and Let the Whales Escape (Finishing Line Press).

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Living with the Elephant. A Poem by Cynthia Bernard

by 
Living with the Elephant


I guess the fog has little cat feet 
sometimes, but around here 
it dances with the wind,
wild and fierce,
especially at dawn.
Howling across the ocean, up the hill,
gusting my robe against me,
sloshing coffee into my face as I try for a sip.

I guess aging is gradual 
sometimes, but around here
it’s a tempest, arising suddenly,
wild and fierce 
and relentless.
Wrenching my days apart
into a before that can never be found 
again -- and a very different now.

I guess one could fight it
sometimes, hair color, face cream, 
supplements and potions,
exercises, affirmations,
denial.

I guess one could simply accept it
sometimes, but around here
arthritis has swept in on elephant feet,
fierce and relentless,
and no pill, no potion,
no affirmation, no meditation,
can sweep it out again.

I guess one could handle things gracefully 
and sometimes I do,
but around here there are other times, too,
when everything seems to hurt
and I want to stay under a quilt
for whatever part of forever
I get to see.


And then again, there are
yet other times, sometimes,
the majesty of the ocean at first light,
the sweetness of love found late,
my hand sliding into his.
New buds on the camellia,
rain on the roof, deer in the yard,
granddaughter’s smile,
or a nothing-special-time
in the exquisiteness of the now.

And I find that 
sometimes, increasingly often,
I welcome it all:
the cat’s feet and the elephant,
things wild and fierce,
quiet moments and raging ones,
lines on my softening face, 
creaky joints and aching bones,
wind in my hair,
full heart,
fog over the ocean at dawn.



(This poem was originally published in Multiplicity Magazine)

Bio: Cynthia Bernard is a woman in her late 60’s who is finding her voice as a poet after many decades of silence. A long-time classroom teacher and a spiritual mentor, she lives and writes on a hill overlooking the ocean, about 20 miles south of San Francisco.
Publication history: Her poetry has been published in Multiplicity Magazine, The MockingOwl Roost, The Vita Brevis Press Poetry Anthology, Last Leaves Literary Magazine, Flora Fiction, fws: a journal of literature and art, and Open Door Magazine, and will appear in upcoming issues of Passager Journal and The Fresh Words Magazine Anthology: Contemporary Poems 2022.

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:x, webster’s, fischschuessel. 3 Poems by Jessica Skyfield

by 
:x.


but it's not just that.

permanence and impermanence.

lasting legacy of what and for how long?

stability defined as: x

the leaning tower of pisa rights.

perception is reality. 

and people leap to their deaths in the virtual world.

but where is the line? and more importantly, who drew it?

i kant do that.

and our collective reality mimics meatloaf,

minimizing magnified metamega for milieu,

because what is it all worth/about/settled for/done for/answered by anyways? 


*




webster's


goblin mode, 2022.

ok then...

fragments of my metaverse. 

blaming my ennui on my gravity disorder.

starseedblahblahblah.

i'm genetically predisposed to lighter climes. 

it's my woo-niverse.

and the typing cat fervently, feverishly paws out:

the weight of it all, unbearable.


*


fischschuessel


enjoy the fragmented figments.

flashes of light. 

flashbulbs of fame.

reasoning, that recognition fails, fleets, flounders, flops, flippantly flying

from rear-end fenders.

and when does the wordplay stop?

einhalten an alles. 

und alle einsteigen. 

zack. sagt die stutzstaffel.

protection from what?! 


*

Jessica Skyfield is currently a teacher. She has been a scientist, a mother, will always be a student, and worn other hats, too. Her poems seek to bring light to our struggle with our awareness of our humanity: the juxtaposition of the smallness of ourselves when viewed universally and yet the large impact each of our individual actions can have.  

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Rilke, Brecht & Goethe, Translations from German poets by Michael R Burch

by 
Komm, Du (“Come, You”)

by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This was Rilke’s last poem, written ten days before his death. He died open-eyed 
in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium, 
of leukemia and its complications. I had a friend who died of leukemia and he was 
burning up with fever in the end. I believe that is what Rilke was describing here: 
he was literally burning alive.

 
Come, you—the last one I acknowledge; return—
incurable pain searing this physical mesh.
As I burned in the spirit once, so now I burn
with you; meanwhile, you consume my flesh.

This wood that long resisted your embrace
now nourishes you; I surrender to your fury
as my gentleness mutates to hellish rage—
uncaged, wild, primal, mindless, outré.

Completely free, no longer future’s pawn,
I clambered up this crazy pyre of pain,
certain I’d never return—my heart’s reserves gone—
to become death’s nameless victim, purged by flame.

Now all I ever was must be denied.
I left my memories of my past elsewhere.
That life—my former life—remains outside.
Inside, I’m lost. Nobody knows me here.

Komm du

Komm du, du letzter, den ich anerkenne,
heilloser Schmerz im leiblichen Geweb:
wie ich im Geiste brannte, sieh, ich brenne
in dir; das Holz hat lange widerstrebt,
der Flamme, die du loderst, zuzustimmen,
nun aber nähr’ ich dich und brenn in dir.
Mein hiesig Mildsein wird in deinem Grimmen
ein Grimm der Hölle nicht von hier.
Ganz rein, ganz planlos frei von Zukunft stieg
ich auf des Leidens wirren Scheiterhaufen,
so sicher nirgend Künftiges zu kaufen
um dieses Herz, darin der Vorrat schwieg.
Bin ich es noch, der da unkenntlich brennt?
Erinnerungen reiß ich nicht herein.
O Leben, Leben: Draußensein.
Und ich in Lohe. Niemand der mich kennt.


Liebes-Lied (“Love Song”)

by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How can I withhold my soul so that it doesn’t touch yours?
How can I lift mine gently to higher things, alone?
Oh, I would gladly find something lost in the dark
in that inert space that fails to resonate until you vibrate.
There everything that moves us, draws us together like a bow
enticing two taut strings to sing together with a simultaneous voice.
Whose instrument are we becoming together?
Whose, the hands that excite us?
Ah, sweet song!

Liebes-Lied

Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daß
sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie
hinheben über dich zu andern Dingen?
Ach gerne möcht ich sie bei irgendwas
Verlorenem im Dunkel unterbringen
an einer fremden stillen Stelle, die
nicht weiterschwingt, wenn deine Tiefen schwingen.
Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich,
nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich,
der aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht.
Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt?
Und welcher Geiger hat uns in der Hand?
O süßes Lied. 


Das Lied des Bettlers (“The Beggar’s Song”)

by Rainer Maria Rilke
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

 
I live outside your gates,
exposed to the rain, exposed to the sun;
sometimes I’ll cradle my right ear
in my right palm;
then when I speak my voice sounds strange,
alien ...

I'm unsure whose voice I’m hearing:
mine or yours.
I implore a trifle;
the poets cry for more.

Sometimes I cover both eyes
and my face disappears;
there it lies heavy in my hands
looking peaceful, unafraid,
so that no one would ever think
I have no place to lay my head.

Das Lied des Bettlers

 
Ich gehe immer von Tor zu Tor,
verregnet und verbrannt;
auf einmal leg ich mein rechtes Ohr
in meine rechte Hand.
Dann kommt mir meine Stimme vor,
als hätt ich sie nie gekannt.

 
Dann weiß ich nicht sicher, wer da schreit,
ich oder irgendwer.
Ich schreie um eine Kleinigkeit.
Die Dichter schrein um mehr.
Und endlich mach ich noch mein Gesicht
mit beiden Augen zu;
wie's dann in der Hand liegt mit seinem Gewicht
sieht es fast aus wie Ruh.
Damit sie nicht meinen ich hätte nicht,
wohin ich mein Haupt tu. 


BERTOLT BRECHT

Die Bücherverbrennung (“The Burning of the Books”)

by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When the Regime
commanded the unlawful books to be burned,
teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires.

Then a banished writer, one of the best,
scanning the list of excommunicated texts,
became enraged: he’d been excluded!

He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath,
to write fiery letters to the incompetents in power —
Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen —
Haven’t I always reported the truth?
Now here you are, treating me like a liar!
Burn me!

Die Bücherverbrennung

Als das Regime befahl, Bücher mit schädlichem Wissen
Öffentlich zu verbrennen, und allenthalben
Ochsen gezwungen wurden, Karren mit Büchern
Zu den Scheiterhaufen zu ziehen, entdeckte
Ein verjagter Dichter, einer der besten, die Liste der
Verbrannten studierend, entsetzt, daß seine
Bücher vergessen waren. Er eilte zum Schreibtisch
Zornbeflügelt, und schrieb einen Brief an die Machthaber.
Verbrennt mich! schrieb er mit fliegender Feder, verbrennt mich!
Tut mir das nicht an! Laßt mich nicht übrig! Habe ich nicht
Immer die Wahrheit berichtet in meinen Büchern? Und jetzt
Werd ich von euch wie ein Lügner behandelt! Ich befehle euch:
Verbrennt mich!


Der Abschied (“The Parting”)

by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We embrace;
my fingers trace
rich cloth
while yours encounter only moth-
eaten fabric.
A quick hug:
you were invited to the gay soiree
while the minions of the "law"
relentlessly pursue me.
We talk about the weather
and our eternal friendship's magic.
Anything else would be too bitter,
too tragic.

Der Abschied

 Wir umarmen uns.
Ich fasse reichen Stoff
Du fassest armen.
Die Umarmung ist schnell
Du gehst zu einem Mahl
Hinter mir sind die Schergen.
Wir sprechen vom Wetter und von unserer
Dauernden Freundschaft. Alles andere
Wäre zu bitter


Die Maske des Bösen (“The Mask of Evil”)

by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A Japanese woodcarving hangs on my wall—
the mask of an ancient demon, limned with golden lacquer.
Not unsympathetically, I observe
the forehead’s bulging veins,
the tremendous strain
such malevolence requires.

 Die Maske des Bösen

 An meiner Wand hängt ein japanisches Holzwerk 
Maske eines bösen Dämons, bemalt mit Goldlack.
Mitfühlend sehe ich / 
Die geschwollenen Stirnadern, andeutend 
Wie anstrengend es ist, böse zu sein. 
  
ON LOOKING AT SCHILLER’S SKULL

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

 
Here in this charnel-house full of bleaching bones,
like yesteryear’s
fading souvenirs,
I see the skulls arranged in strange ordered rows.

Who knows whose owners might have beheaded peers,
packed tightly here
despite once repellent hate?
Here weaponless, they stand, in this gentled state.

These arms and hands, they once were so delicate!
How articulately
they moved! Ah me!
What athletes once paced about on these padded feet?

Still there’s no hope of rest for you, lost souls!
Deprived of graves,
forced here like slaves
to occupy this overworld, unlamented ghouls!

Now who’s to know who loved one orb here detained?
Except for me;
reader, hear my plea:
I know the grandeur of the mind it contained!

Yes, and I know the impulse true love would stir
here, where I stand
in this alien land
surrounded by these husks, like a treasurer!

Even in this cold,
in this dust and mould
I am startled by a strange, ancient reverie, ...
as if this shrine to death could quicken me!

One shape out of the past keeps calling me
with its mystery!
Still retaining its former angelic grace!
And at that ecstatic sight, I am back at sea ...

Swept by that current to where immortals race.
O secret vessel, you
gave Life its truth.
It falls on me now to recall your expressive face.

I turn away, abashed here by what I see:
this mould was worth
more than all the earth.
Let me breathe fresh air and let my wild thoughts run free!

What is there better in this dark Life than he
who gives us a sense of man’s divinity,
of his place in the universe?
A man who’s both flesh and spirit—living verse!



Michael R. Burch is an American poet who lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Beth and two incredibly spoiled puppies. He has over 6,000 publications, including poems that have gone viral. His poems, translations, essays, articles, letters, epigrams, jokes and puns have been published by TIME, USA Today, BBC Radio 3, Writer’s Digest–The Year’s Best Writing and hundreds of literary journals. His poetry has been translated into 14 languages, taught in high schools and colleges, and set to music by 23 composers, including two potential operas if the money ever materializes. He also edits www.thehypertexts.com, has served as editor of international poetry and translations for Better Than Starbucks, is on the board of Borderless Journal, an international literary journal, and has judged a number of poetry contests over the years.
 
 

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the fish,Mother Ganga & festering. 3 Poems by Stephen House

by 
the fish

i’m in horror 
watching him 
pull up the hooked fish
on the end of the jetty 
where i am taking in the sunset  

and while i know i can’t do anything 
to save the fish 
from this accepted by most slaughter  

i look into the fisherman’s eyes 
and quietly say
‘that poor dying fish’ 

to which he shrugs 

but i get a sense 
by the look he gives the fish 
and me

that just for moment
hearing my words 
he completely falls into 
what i said

and i suppose
that counts for something

re: the fish
and the life 
it has lived

on planet earth

our shared home
 

Mother Ganga

i stand 

hold the rusty chain 
that stops bathing people 
being swept away  

and lower my body 
into the healing stream
of Mother Ganga 

flowing fast into the plains of India 
from the Himalayas north 

and unexpectedly 
(for i am a sceptic 
until something
is scientifically proven)
 
i instantly feel my inner dirt 
being washed away

and a renewal take place

and i do know 
what i feel

whether i believe it
or not 


festering

i have often wondered 
why we won’t return to those years
through a conversation 
and put it to rest for good 

but we don’t bring it up

and so 
it continues to sit 

festering 

like an unopened box of distress 
lurking by us 

each time 
we are together

and it probably always will
unless something changes

between us

again

Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s had 20 plays produced with many published by Australian Plays Transform. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts, and an Asialink India literature residency. He’s had two chapbooks published by ICOE Press Australia: ‘real and unreal’ poetry and ‘The Ajoona Guest House’ monologue. His next book drops soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely.

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