Michael R. Burch
To Flower
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When Pentheus [‘grief’] went into the mountains in the garb of the bacchae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511–733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.—MRB
We are not long for this earth, I know—
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?
The agave knows best when it’s time to die
and rages to life with such rapturous leaves
her name means “Illustrious.” Each hour more high,
she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes
in love at all, she has left it behind
to flower, to flower. When darkness falls
she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls:
beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind,
she never adored it, nor watches it go.
Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?
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Winter has cast his cloak away
by Charles d‘Orleans (c. 1394–1465)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Winter has cast his cloak away
of wind and cold and chilling rain
to dress in embroidered light again:
the light of day—bright, festive, gay!
Each bird and beast, without delay,
in its own tongue, sings this refrain:
“Winter has cast his cloak away!”
Brooks, fountains, rivers, streams at play,
wear, with their summer livery,
bright beads of silver jewelry.
All Earth has a new and fresh display:
Winter has cast his cloak away!
Note: This rondeau was set to music by Debussy in his “Trois chansons de France.”—MRB
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Both published previously in The HyperTexts.​
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Michael R. Burch is one of the world’s most-published poets, with over 11,500 publications, including poems that have gone viral. This does not include self-published writings; if self-published writings were included, Burch’s total publications would be well over 20,000. Burch has also had 74 poems set to music by composers, from swamp blues to classical. Burch is also a longtime editor, publisher and translator of Jewish Holocaust poetry and poems about the Trail of Tears, Hiroshima, Ukraine, the Nakba, and school shootings. His full biography may be read here.
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