Tag: Translations

Translations by Michael R. Burch

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment
Loose translations and interpretations of Ono no Komachi

If fields of autumn flowers
can shed their blossoms, shameless,
why can’t I also frolic here—
as fearless, wild and blameless?

Alas, the beauty of the flowers came to naught
as I watched the rain, lost in melancholy thought …

Am I to spend the night alone
atop this summit,
cold and lost?
Won’t you at least lend me
your robes of moss?

I nodded off thinking about you
only to have your appear in my dreams.
Had I known that I slept,
I’d have never awakened!

This selection previously appeared in Hub Pages (top ten love poems), Brief Poems, and Poem Today.


This abandoned mountain shack —
how many nights
has autumn sheltered here?

Once-colorful flowers faded,
while in my drab cell
life’s impulse also abated
as the long rains fell.

In this dismal world
the living decrease
as the dead increase…
oh, how much longer
must I bear this body of grief?

Did you appear
only because I was lost in thoughts of love
when I nodded off, day-dreaming of you?
(If I had known that you
couldn’t possibly be true
I’d have never awakened!)




Michael R. Burch‘s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into 17 languages, incorporated into three plays and four operas, and set to music, from swamp blues to classical, by 29 composers. He also edits The HyperTexts.

Translations of Sappho by Michael R. Burch

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment

Sappho, fragment 58

Pain
drains
me
to
the
last
drop
.

–translation by Michael R. Burch

 

Sappho, fragment 155

A short revealing frock?
It’s just my luck
your lips were made to mock!

(Pollux wrote: “Sappho used the word beudos [Βεῦδοσ] for a woman’s dress, a kimbericon, a kind of short transparent frock.”)

–loose translation by Michael R. Burch

 

Sappho, fragment 156

She keeps her scents
in a dressing-case.
And her sense?
In some undiscoverable place.

(Phrynichus wrote: “Sappho calls a woman’s dressing-case, where she keeps her scents and such things, grutê [γρύτη].”)

–loose translation by Michael R. Burch

 

Sappho, fragment 47

Eros harrows my heart:
wild winds whipping desolate mountains,
uprooting oaks.

–loose translation by Michael R. Burch

 

Sappho, fragment 50

Eros, the limb-shatterer,
rattles me,
an irresistible
constrictor.

–loose translation by Michael R. Burch

 

Sappho, fragment 22

That enticing girl’s clinging dresses
leave me trembling, overcome by happiness,
as once, when I saw the Goddess in my prayers
eclipsing Cyprus.

–loose translation by Michael R. Burch

 

 

Michael R. Burch, founder of The HyperTexts, lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Beth, their son Jeremy, and three outrageously spoiled puppies. His poems, epigrams, translations, essays, articles, reviews, short stories, puns, jokes and letters have appeared more than 5,000 times in publications which include TIME, USA Today, The Hindu, BBC Radio 3, CNN.com, Daily Kos, The Washington Post, Light Quarterly, The Lyric, Measure, Writer’s Digest—The Year’s Best Writing, The Best of the Eclectic Muse, Unlikely Stories and hundreds of other literary journals, websites and blogs. He has two published books, Violets for Beth (White Violet Press, 2012) and O, Terrible Angel (Ancient Cypress Press, 2013).