Michael R. Burch’s poems

Michael R. Burch’s poems, translations, essays, articles and letters have appeared in publications such as TIME, USA Today, Writer’s Digest, BBC Radio 3 and hundreds of literary journals and websites. His poetry has been translated into nine languages and set to music by composers Alexander Comitas and Seth Wright. He also edits www.thehypertexts.com



Roses for a Lover, Idealized

When you have become to me

as roses bloom, in memory,

exquisite, each sharp thorn forgot,

will I recall—yours made me bleed?

When winter makes me think of you—

whorls petrified in frozen dew,

bright promises blithe spring forsook,

will I recall your words—barbed, cruel?

For All That I Remembered

For all that I remembered, I forgot

her name, her face, the reason that we loved ...

and yet I hold her close within my thought:

I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair

that fell across her face, the apricot

clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed                   

so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan.

The memory of her gathers like a flood

and bears me to that night, that only night,

when she and I were one, and if I could ...

I’d reach to her this time and, smiling, brush

the hair out of her eyes, and hold intact

each feature, each impression. Love is such

a threadbare sort of magic, it is gone

before we recognize it. I would crush

my lips to hers to hold their memory,

if not more tightly, less elusively.

The Effects of Memory

A black ringlet curls to lie

at the nape of her neck,

glistening with sweat

in the evaporate moonlight ...

This is what I remember

now that I cannot forget.

And tonight,                          

if I have forgotten her name,

I remember ...

rigid wire and white lace

half-impressed in her flesh,

our soft cries, like regret

... the enameled white clips

of her bra strap

still inscribe dimpled marks

that my kisses erase ...

now that I have forgotten her face.

                                                  Poetry

Poetry, I found you
where at last they chained and bound you;

with devices all around you
to torture and confound you,

I found you—shivering, bare.

They had shorn your raven hair
and taken both your eyes

which, once cerulean as dawn’s skies,
had leapt with the sun to wild surmise

of what was waiting there.

Your back was bent with untold care;
there savage brands had left cruel scars

as though the wounds of countless wars;
your bones were broken with the force

with which they’d lashed your flesh so fair.

You once were loveliest of all.
So many nights you held in thrall

a scrawny lad who heard your call
from where dawn’s milling showers fall—

pale meteors through sapphire air.

I learned the eagerness of youth
to temper for a lover’s touch;

I felt you, tremulant, reprove
each time I fumbled over-much.

Your merest word became my prayer.

You took me gently by the hand
and led my steps from child to man;

now I look back, remember when—
you shone, and cannot understand

why now, tonight, you bear their brand.

*

I will take and cradle you in my arms,
remindful of the gentle charms

you showed me once, of yore;

and I will lead you from your cell tonight—
back into that incandescent light

which flows out of the core
of a sun whose robes you wore.

And I will wash your feet with tears
for all those blissful years . . .

my love, whom I adore.

[Published by The Lyric]