We are left speechless by man's inhumanity to his fellow man, to his brothers and sisters and their children. This collection includes poems about the Holocaust, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Gaza, terrorism and 9-11, war, and other forms of human violence...



Speechless at Auschwitz
by Ko Un
translation by Michael R. Burch

At Auschwitz
piles of glasses
mountains of shoes
returning, we stared out different windows.

***

Ko Un was speechless at Auschwitz.
Someday, when it’s too late,
will we be speechless at Gaza?
―Michael R. Burch

These are poems about Palestinian children and their mothers...

 

Epitaph for a Palestinian Child
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

 

Epitaph for a Palestinian Girl
by Michael R. Burch

Find in her pallid, dread repose,
no hope, alas!, for a human Rose.

 

who, US?
by Michael R. Burch

jesus was born
a palestinian child
where there’s no Room
for the meek and the mild

These are poems for children and poems about children and their mothers, fathers, grandmother, grandfathers and extended families. 

The Desk
by Michael R. Burch

for Jeremy

There is a child I used to know
who sat, perhaps, at this same desk
where you sit now, and made a mess
of things sometimes.I wonder how
he learned at all...

These are my modern English translations of ancient Greek poems and epigrams by Sophocles, including antinatalist poems and epigrams.

It’s a hundred times better not be born;
but if we cannot avoid the light,
the path of least harm is swiftly to return
to death’s eternal night!
Sophocles (circa 497-406 BC), Oedipus at Colonus, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Not to have been born is best,
and blessed
beyond the ability of words to express.
—Sophocles, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These are poems I call my Fables...



Will There Be Starlight
by Michael R. Burch

These are modern English translations of poems by the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), who has been called the "Bard of Bengal" and "the Bengali Shelley." In 1913 Tagore became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore was also a notable artist, musician and polymath.

The Seashore Gathering
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

These are Christmas poems by Michael R. Burch. Some are darker Christmas poems and heretical Christmas poems. 

The First Christmas
by Michael R. Burch

’Twas in a land so long ago . . .
the lambs lay blanketed in snow
and little children everywhere
sat and watched warm embers glow
and dreamed (of what, we do not know).

And THEN—a star appeared on high,
The brightest man had ever seen!
It made the children whisper low
in puzzled awe (what did it mean?).
It made the wooly lambkins cry.