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 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

Hugh MacDiarmid wrote "The Watergaw" in a Scots dialect. I have translated the poem into modern English to make it easier to read and understand. A watergaw is a fragmentary rainbow. 

The Watergaw
by Hugh MacDiarmid
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

These are free verse poems I have written over the last half century, and also a few rhyming poems about free verse.

Reason Without Rhyme
by Michael R. Burch

I used to be averse
to free verse,
but now I admit
YOUR rhyming is WORSE!

But alas, in the end,
it’s all the same:
all verse is unpaid
and a crying shame.

***

The AI Poets
by Michael R. Burch

The computer-poets stand hushed
except for the faint hum
of their efficient fans,

These are prose poems and experimental poems.

Prose Poem: The Trouble with Poets
by Michael R. Burch

This morning the neighborhood girls were helping their mothers with chores, but one odd little girl went out picking roses by herself, looking very small and lonely. Suddenly the odd one refused to pick roses anymore because it occurred to her that being plucked might “hurt” them. Now she just sits beside the bushes, rocking gently back and forth, weeping and consoling the vegetation!

These are my modern English translations of the great Scottish poet William Dunbar.

Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar (c. 1460-1530)
loose translation 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 poems about time, mortality, death, decay and loss ...

These are poems about the passage of time, aging, mortality and death. 

The Shrinking Season
by Michael R. Burch

With every wearying year
the weight of the winter grows
and while the schoolgirl outgrows
her clothes,
the widow disappears
in hers.

Published by Angle, Poem Today (featured poem), Heartfelt Death Poems, Girls and Goblins and Madly Jane

***

Distances
by Michael R. Burch

"Nightfall" is a poem I wrote for my fellow poet and friend Kevin Nicholas Roberts, shortly after his death. 

Nightfall
by Michael R. Burch

for Kevin Nicholas Roberts