Independence Day Poems and Songs

These are "subversive" poems and songs, if you'll pardon the pun. After all, independence does not mean compliance.

Photo by Dmytro Shevchenko

This page contains poems about war, peace, independence and freedom: the idea of freedom and the feeling of freedom. I have included poems by the Masters and by contemporary poets and songwriters.―MRB

I have read a fiery gospel
Writ in burnish'd rows of steel ...
―"Battle Hymn of the Republic" with lyrics by Julia Ward Howe

"Battle Hymn of the Republic" became the anthem of Northern abolitionists and soldiers during the Civil War in their efforts to end slavery and reunite the United States.

Find the cost of freedom buried in the ground;
Mother earth will swallow you, lay your body down…
—Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

Hymn for Fallen Soldiers
by Michael R. Burch

Sound the awesome cannons.
Pin medals to each breast.
Attention, honor guard!
Give them a hero’s rest.

Recite their names to the heavens
Till the stars acknowledge their kin.
Then let the land they defended
Gather them in again.

When I learned there’s an American military organization, the DPAA (Defense/POW/MIA Accounting Agency) that is still finding and bringing home the bodies of soldiers who died serving their country in World War II, after blubbering like a baby, I managed to eke out this poem.

Passerby,
tell the Spartans we lie
here, dead at their word,
obedient to their command.
Have they heard?
Do they understand?
Michael R. Burch, after Simonides

Here's a poem by one of the best American poets that seems especially relevant this Independence Day, as we face a possible purge of immigrants, including children.

Refugee
by Emily Dickinson

These Strangers, in a foreign World,
Protection asked of me―
Befriend them, lest Yourself in Heaven
Be found a Refugee―

Here's another poem with a similar theme and message:

Dispensing Keys
by Hafiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The imbecile
constructs cages
for everyone he knows,
while the sage
(who has to duck his head
whenever the moon glows)
keeps dispensing keys
all night long
to the beautiful, rowdy,
prison gang.

I love the wisdom and spirit of Hafiz in this subversive (pardon the pun) little poem. I can see Trump putting refugees in cages, while Hafiz goes around letting them out for a moondance!

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” — George Orwell

Another great song for Independence Day is the soul-stirring "A Change is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke. And how about "Independence Day" by Martina McBride? Or take this old favorite ...

This land is your land
This land is my land
From California to the New York island; 
From the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters 
This land was made for you and me.
―"This Land Is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie

Woody Guthrie was a tenant of the Trumps when he lived in New York and he wrote angry songs about the racism of "Old Man Trump." Frederick Trump, the father of Donald Trump, was arrested at a KKK rally over the assault of a police officer. We know it was Trump's father because a New York newspaper published his Jamaica Estates address. I wonder what Woody Guthrie would say about the "independence" of a nation that elected a Trump president?

THE FOURTH OF JULY, 2020
by Robert Lavett Smith

There's nothing really left to celebrate:
Whatever freedoms we believed we had,
Submerged beneath a tidal wave of hate,
Are grace notes in a broken jeremiad.
Bring on the marching bands, celebrities,
Pop icons gathered at the Capitol:
As death tolls rise these doomed festivities
Seem less a party than a funeral.
While the United States persists in name,
Nothing remains of all those high ideals
The Founding Fathers held, and to our shame
We bare the guilt we've struggled to conceal.
Hitler would almost surely recognize
The numb complacency that dulls our eyes.

Let's hope enough Americans open their eyes to reverse our nation's backsliding course in coming elections.

Some folks are born, made to wave the flag
Ooh, they're red, white and blue
And when the band plays, "Hail To The Chief"
Ooh, they point the cannon at you ...
―"Fortunate Son" by John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival

Here Dead Lie We
by A. E. Housman

Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.

"Here Dead Lie We" is one of my favorite poems because in two perfect sentences it captures much of the heartache and heartbreak of young men who fight and die for their countries in wars which, all too often, have little to do with "national defense" and much more to do with the ambitions of wizened warmongers who sit cynically on the sidelines while other people fight and die. A related poem (which appears below) is "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen, a truly great poet who died just two weeks before the armistice that ended World War I.

XXXVII: Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
by A. E. Housman

These, in the days when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

Our thanks to Gail White for suggesting this fine poem by one of the all-time great poets.

We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights,
that among these are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness.
― Thomas Jefferson, "The Declaration of Independence"

The lines above are poetry, written in a ringing iambic pentameter, like the closing lines of Tennyson's blank verse masterpiece "Ulysses." These may be the most important words ever written, as they changed the course of human history by challenging the "divine right of kings" and placing the rights of commoners on the same plane as those of sovereigns and lords. But it is one of the great ironies of human history that Thomas Jefferson remained a sovereign lord himself. Jefferson was not only a slaveowner, but raised his children by Sally Hemmings as slaves in his grand mansion and architectural masterpiece, Monticello. It would remain to men and women like Sitting Bull, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Susan B. Anthony, Einstein, Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Harvey Milk, Barney Frank, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and the Kennedy brothers to lobby and fight for true equality.

If we are to ever have real peace in the world,
we will have to begin with the children.
― Gandhi

Gandhi's words, which strike me as true, remind me of Jesus Christ saying, "Suffer the little children to come unto me." But unfortunately all-too-often Christianity causes children to suffer, because children who are raised in Christian families and churches around the world must face the immensely heavy burden of an "eternal hell." I understand and sympathize because I wrestled with that terror as a child, and even into my adulthood. But I did a careful study of the Bible, and to my surprise I found a simple proof that there is no reason to believe in an eternal hell. If you are a parent, or just someone who cares about children and wants them to be free of irrational fears, please take time to read my simple proof that there is No Hell in the Bible.

Oh, fallen camellias,
if I were you,
I'd leap into the torrent!
― Takaha Shugyo, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Takaha Shugyo's wonderful haiku almost perfectly captures the idea of freedom through annihilation with its startling image of fallen flowers resurrecting themselves just long enough to leap into a cataract ... or at least that's my interpretation. I love the poem so much that I chose to translate it myself. When I read it, I think of 9-11 and the subsequent wars, and of all the fallen mothers and children and soldiers on both sides of an irrational, unreasoned conflict ... why are we fighting and killing each other, when what we all want, really, is peace and the opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

Blowin' in the Wind
by Bob Dylan

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

The first song of Bob Dylan’s that I remember hearing as a boy was “Blowin’ in the Wind.” The questions raised by that song still reverberate today, especially in the aftermath of 9-11 and two trillion-dollar, decade-long wars that have lead to multitudes of deaths and seem to have resolved nothing.

In Time of "The Breaking of Nations"
by Thomas Hardy

Only a man harrowing clods 
  In a slow silent walk, 
With an old horse that stumbles and nods 
  Half asleep as they stalk. 
 
Only thin smoke without flame
  From the heaps of couch grass: 
Yet this will go onward the same 
  Though Dynasties pass. 
 
Yonder a maid and her wight 
  Come whispering by;
War's annals will fade into night 
  Ere their story die.

While Thomas Hardy tended to write dark, moody, even cynical poems, it this poem he seems to say that young love will outlast the annals of war and the dynasties that create them.

High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew,
And while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

"High Flight" was written shortly before John Gillespie Magee died in a plane crash at age 19 during World War II. He was an American who enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force prior to the United States entering the war. "High Flight" was a favorite poem of Ronald Reagan, who quoted excerpts in his eulogy for the crew of the space shuttle Challenger after it crashed in 1986.

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.

As Americans celebrate Independence Day for ourselves and our loved ones, I think it behooves us to consider the freedom and human rights of Palestinian children, and all the other children who have been denied what we sometimes take for granted  ...

Jerusalem
by William Blake

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

This is one of the great invocations in the English language: to join William Blake's "mental fight" against the Satanic Mills of big business and warmongering tyrannical government (which Dwight D. Eisenhower would later call the "military-industrial complex"). Blake would undoubtedly have included organized religion in the mix, creating an unholy Trinity for free men and women to oppose.

Wulf and Eadwacer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My clan's curs pursue him like crippled game;
they'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack.
It is otherwise with us.

Wulf's on one island; I'm on another.
His island's a fortress, fastened by fens. (fastened=secured)
Here, bloodthirsty curs howl for carnage.
They'll rip him apart if he approaches their pack.
It is otherwise with us.

My hopes pursued Wulf like panting hounds,
but whenever it rained—how I wept!—
the boldest cur clutched me in his paws:
good feelings, to a point, but the end loathsome!

Wulf, O, my Wulf, my ache for you
has made me sick; your seldom-comings
have left me famished, deprived of real meat.

Have you heard, Eadwacer? Watchdog!
A wolf has borne our wretched whelp to the woods.
One can easily sever what never was one:
our song together.

"Wulf and Eadwacer" is one of the first truly great lyric poems in the English language (a very ancient form of the English language which is virtually unreadable today). In my interpretation, the female speaker has been separated from her lover, Wulf, and is being raped by her captor, Eadwacer. She has borne Eadwacer's child, but something happened to the child in the woods. Did the woman remove the child from Eadwacer's presence to protect the child, or did Eadwacer's wife perhaps get rid of the child out of jealousy? How many times throughout human history have wars caused women and children to suffer, I wonder? In any case, this is wonderful poem and the startling image of a loveless relationship being like a song in which two voices never harmonized remains one of the strongest in English literature.

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
by William Butler Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

I believe the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats quite wonderfully captured the dilemma of Irish pilots and soldiers who defended Great Britain, which oppressed their countrymen, against another potential oppressor, Germany.

Dover Beach
by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" is one of the very best early modern poems. In it he compares religious faith to the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of a turbid sea, and he calls for lovers to be true to each other as "ignorant armies clash by night."

Dulce Et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—-An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Note: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" is from Horace's Odes and means: "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country."

A light exists in spring
by Emily Dickinson

A light exists in Spring
Not present on the year
At any other period—
When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
On solitary fields
That science cannot overtake
But human nature feels.

It waits upon the lawn,
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.

Emily Dickinson's poem quite magically captures something of the mystery and "feel" of freedom. She compares this elusive freedom, this "light," to a sacrament.

When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer
by Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman was a contemporary of Emily Dickinson, although it seems unlikely that they ever read each other's poems (Dickinson was probably unknown to Whitman because she was a barely-published recluse, while she declined to read his poetry because he was considered scandalous.) And yet Whitman wrote a very similar poem, albeit in a very dissimilar style.

Romance by the Book
by T. Merrill

Suppose just one might suffice, one
matching your vision well enough
to blind you to the rest.

Imagine how in your covers at night
you could fall apart,
perish in the pillows together,

vacate the present
perhaps to reunite in the future,
where one of you might awaken

to behold again
in the other's unshifting immortal light
how nothing alone survives night.

Tom Merrill is a contemporary poet who, like Dickinson and Whitman, captures something of the elusiveness of whatever it is we're trying to capture here on earth. Merrill's love, like Dickinson's light and Whitman's stars, is magical but impossible to pin down for any length of time.

Eros harrows my heart:
wild winds sweeping desolate mountains,
leveling oaks.
― Sappho, fragment 42, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Like Tom Merrill, the Greek poet Sappho touches on the darker side of love, comparing it to a wind that is free but also destructive. I am reminded of silverback gorillas, distant cousins to man, who sometimes shake with longing before mating.

Advice to a Girl
by Sara Teasdale

No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed;
Lay that on your heart,
My young angry dear;
This truth, this hard and precious stone,
Lay it on your hot cheek,
Let it hide your tear.
Hold it like a crystal
When you are alone
And gaze in the depths of the icy stone.
Long, look long and you will be blessed:
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed.

Sara Teasdale's poem may be taken to be about the freedom of individuality: even if a girl gives something of herself away, still she retains something of herself that cannot be possessed by anyone else.

Autumn Conundrum
by Michael R. Burch

It's not that every leaf must finally fall,
it's just that we can never catch them all.

I hope my epigram communicates something of both the sense of freedom and the sense of loss engendered by falling autumn leaves.

Anthem For Doomed Youth
by Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Privilege
by Michael R. Burch

This poem is dedicated to Harvey Stanbrough, an ex-marine who was nominated for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize and has written passionately and eloquently about the horror and absurdity of war in “Lessons for a Barren Population.”

No, I will never know
what you saw or what you felt,
thrust into the maw of Eternity,

watching the mortars nightly
greedily making their rounds,
hearing the soft damp hiss

of men’s souls like helium escaping
their collapsing torn bodies,
or lying alone, feeling the great roar

of your own heart.
But I know:
there is a bitter knowledge

of death I have not achieved,
and in thankful ignorance,
and especially for my son

and for all who benefit so easily
at so unthinkable a price,
I thank you.

Momentum! Momentum!
by Michael R. Burch

for the neo-Cons

Crossing the Rubicon, we come!
Momentum! Momentum! Furious hooves!
The Gauls we have slaughtered, no man disapproves.
War’s hawks shrieking-strident, white doves stricken dumb.

Coo us no cooings of pale-breasted peace!
Momentum! Momentum! Imperious hooves!
The blood of barbarians brightens our greaves.
Pompey’s head in a basket? We slumber at ease.

Seduce us again, great Bellona, dark queen!
Momentum! Momentum! Curious hooves
Now pound out strange questions, but what can they mean
As the great stallions rear and their riders careen?

Originally published by Bewildering Stories

NOTE: Bellona was the Roman goddess of war. The name "Bellona" derives from the Latin word for "war" (bellum), and is linguistically related to the English word "belligerent" (literally, "war-waging"). In earlier times she was called Duellona, that name being derived from a more ancient word for "battle."

Recursion
by Michael R. Burch

In a dream I saw boys lying
under banners gaily flying
and I heard their mothers sighing
from some dark distant shore.

For I saw their sons essaying
into fields―gleeful, braying―
their bright armaments displaying;
such manly oaths they swore!

From their playfields, boys returning
full of honor’s white-hot burning
and desire’s restless yearning
sired new kids for the corps.

In a dream I saw boys dying
under banners gaily lying
and I heard their mothers crying
from some dark distant shore.

Epitaphs for Fallen Soldiers and Mariners

Mariner, do not ask whose tomb this may be,
but go with good fortune: I wish you a kinder sea.
Michael R. Burch, after Plato

Passerby,
tell the Spartans we lie
here, dead at their word,
obedient to their command.
Have they heard?
Do they understand?
Michael R. Burch, after Simonides

He lies here in state tonight: great is his Monument!
Yet Ares cares not, neither does War relent.
Michael R. Burch, after Anacreon

Blame not the gale, or the inhospitable sea-gulf, or friends’ tardiness,
mariner! Just man’s foolhardiness.
Michael R. Burch, after Leonidas of Tarentum

Lay Down Your Arms
by Michael R. Burch

Lay down your arms; come, sleep in the sand.
The battle is over and night is at hand.
Our voyage has ended; there's nowhere to go . . .
the earth is a cinder still faintly aglow.

Lay down your pamphlets; let's bicker no more.
Instead, let us sleep here on this ravaged shore.
The sea is still boiling; the air is wan, thin . . .
lay down your pamphlets; now no one will “win.”

Lay down your hymnals; abandon all song.
If God was to save us, He waited too long.
A new world emerges, but this world is through . . .
so lay down your hymnals, or write something new.

I wrote this poem around age 20-21, as a college sophomore or junior. It was one of my first acceptances by a literary journal, The Romantist. But I never received a copy, so I can’t be sure that it was actually published, drat!

Poppy
by Michael R. Burch

“It is lonely to be born.” – Dannie Abse, “The Second Coming”

It is lonely to be born
between the intimate ears of corn . . .
the sunlit, flooded, shellshocked rows.

The scarecrow flutters, listens, knows . . .

Pale butterflies in staggering flight
ascend the gauntlet winds and light
before the scything harvester.

The winsome buds of cornflowers
prepare themselves to be airborne,
and it is lonely to be shorn,
decapitate, of eager life
so early in love’s blinding maze
of silks and tassels, goldened days
when life’s renewed, gone underground.

Sad confidante of worm and mound,
how little stands to be regained
of what is left.
A tiny cleft
now marks your birth, your reddening
among the amber waves. O, sing!

Another waits to be reborn
among bent thistle, down and thorn.
A hoofprint’s cleft, a ram’s curved horn
curled inward, turned against the heart,
a spoor like infamy. Depart.
You came too late, the signs are clear:
whose world this is, now watches, near.
There is no opiate for the heart.

Originally published by Borderless Journal

War
by Michael R. Burch

lysander lies in lauded greece
and sleeps and dreams, a stone for a pillow,
unseeing as sunset devours limp willows,
but War glares on.

and joab's sightless gaze is turned
beyond the jordan's ravaged shore;
his war-ax lies to be taxed no more,
but War hacks on.

and roland sleeps in poppied fields
with flowers flowing at his feet;
their fragrance lulls his soul to sleep,
but War raves on.

and patton sighs an unheard sigh
for sorties past and those to come;
he does not heed the battle drum,
but War rolls on.

for now new heroes grab up guns
and rush to fight their fathers' wars,
as warriors' children must, of course,
while War laughs on.

I believe I wrote the first version of this poem around age 17.

An Ecstasy of Fumbling
by Michael R. Burch

The poets believe
everything resolves to metaphor—
a distillation,
a vapor
beyond filtration,
though perhaps not quite as volatile as before.

The poets conceive
of death in the trenches
as the price of art,
not war,
fumbling with their masque-like
dissertations
to describe the Hollywood-like gore

as something beyond belief,
abstracting concrete bunkers to Achaemenid bas-relief.

The Shape of Mourning
by Michael R. Burch

The shape of mourning
is an oiled creel
shining with unuse,

the bolt of cold steel
on a locker
shielding memory,

the monthly penance
of flowers,
the annual wake,

the face in the photograph
no longer dissolving under scrutiny,
becoming a keepsake,

the useless mower
lying forgotten
in weeds,

rings and crosses and
all the paraphernalia
the soul no longer needs.

splintering
by michael r. burch

we have grown too far apart,
each heart
long numbed by time and pain.

we have grown too far apart;
the DARK
now calls us. why refrain?

we have grown too far apart;
what spark
could ever light our lives again

or persuade us to remain?

Nucleotidings
by Michael R. Burch

“We will walk taller!” said Gupta,
sorta abrupta,
hand-in-hand with his mom,
eyeing the A-bomb.

“Who needs a mahatma
in the aftermath of NAFTA?
Now, that was a disaster,”
cried glib Punjab.

“After Y2k,
time will spin out of control anyway,”
flamed Vijay.

“My family is relatively heavy,
too big even for a pig-barn Chevy;
we need more space,”
spat What’s His Face.

“What does it matter,
dirge or mantra,”
sighed Serge.

“The world will wobble
in Hubble’s lens
till the tempest ends,”
wailed Mercedes.

“The world is going to hell in a bucket.
So fuck it and get outta my face!
We own this place!
Me and my friends got more guns than ISIS,
so what’s the crisis?”
cried Bubba Billy Joe Bob Puckett.

Ulysses
by Lord Alfred Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees.  All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea.  I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart.
Much have I seen and known—cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all,—
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
     This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone.  He works his work, I mine.
     There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Salve
by Michael R. Burch

for the victims and survivors of 9-11

The world is unsalvageable ...

but as we lie here
in bed
stricken to the heart by love
despite war’s
flickering images,

sometimes we still touch,

laughing, amazed,
that our flesh
does not despair
of love
as we do,

that our bodies are wise

in ways we refuse
to comprehend,
still insisting we eat,
drink ...
even multiply.

And so we touch ...

touch, and only imagine
ourselves immune:
two among billions

in this night of wished-on stars,

caresses,
kisses,
and condolences.

We are not lovers of irony,

we
who imagine ourselves
beyond the redemption
of tears
because we have salvaged
so few
for ourselves ...

and so we laugh
at our predicament,
fumbling for the ointment.

Related pages: American Fascism, The American Holocausts, Parables of Zion, Let Freedom Sing, The Nakba: The Holocaust of the Palestinians

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