Best Albescent Poems

Mahmoud Darwish English Translations of Arabic Poems



Palestine
by Mahmoud Darwish
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This land gives us
all that makes life worthwhile:
April's blushing advances,
the aroma of...

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Today, catching sight of the mallards
crying over Lake Iware:
Must I too vanish into the clouds?
—Prince Otsu translation by Michael R. Burch  

This world—
to what...

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Athenian Epitaphs

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
—Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Does my...

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Heat Lightening
by Michael R. Burch

Each night beneath the elms, we never knew
which lights beyond dark hills might stall, advance,
then lurch into strange headbeams tilted up
like...

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My mirror grinned at my first grey
With rearing youth, it’s my first fray
Disturbed, with care I plucked that bane
Next day to find one more, again
I...

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It is hard and bleak
now, below his tired feet
with the grey above him,

albescent with time
clouds bubble above him there
like an old man’s  beard,

though you,...

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I don't know how it began-
what matters is it's there
like a famished bee on on a daisy
Let me release a sigh-


It was one point in...

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With that invisibilty of age
I can fly my life like a kite !
Uninvited and unseen,
albescent, grey, you know what I mean,
( not the first flush...

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Such Tenderness
by Michael R. Burch

for the mothers of Gaza

There was, in your touch, such tenderness—as
only the dove on her mildest day has,
when she shelters downed...

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The windows of my soul open through your eyes,
edges on my heart, your smile soothes.
Tell me all of your tales of sadness,
share with me this...

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ZEN DEATH HAIKU VIII

These are my modern English translations of Japanese Zen Death Haiku. 

Since I was born, 
I must die, 
and so …
—Kisei (1688-1764)...

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Safe Harbor
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin N. Roberts

The sea at night seems
an alembic of dreams—
the moans of the gulls,
the foghorns’ bawlings.

A century late
to be melancholy,
I...

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These are my modern English translations of ancient Greek epigrams by Anacreon from the Anacreontea. 

Here he lies in state tonight: great is his Monument!
Yet...

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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...

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POEMS ABOUT OPHELIA

Ophélie (“Ophelia”)
by Arthur Rimbaud
translation by Michael R. Burch

On pitiless black waves unsinking stars abide
while pale Ophelia, a lethargic lily, drifts by.
Here, tangled in...

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