Night Labor

These are poems about night, poems about darkness, poems about laboring in the dark...

The first poet we know by name, the ancient Sumerian poetess Enheduanna, wrote a hymn to her goddess, Inanna, in which she spoke about laboring in the dark as she constructed the earth’s first poetry anthology and hymnal, around 4,250 years ago:

These are my innovations,
O Mighty Queen, Inanna, that I made for you!
What I composed for you by the dark of night,
The cantor will chant by day.
—Enheduanna, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As the wisest of men once observed, there is nothing new under the sun. Thus poets continue to write by night, usually for little (or no) pay and seldom any recognition.

These are poems about night labor, about giving things birth in the dark, and sometimes just living through the darkness to fight another day, or not surviving …



Night Labor
by Michael R. Burch

for Rachel Corrie

Tonight we keep the flame alive;
we keep the candle lit.
We burn bright incense in your name
and swear we’ll not forget—
your innocence, your courage,
your example—till bleak night
surrenders to irrevocable dawn
and hate yields to love’s light.

                             Amen

Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) weaponized bulldozer as she used her body as a “human shield” in an attempt to prevent it from destroying the home of the Palestinian pharmacist Samir Nasrallah on March 16, 2003. Colin Reese, her fellow peace activist and roommate, said Rachel was "not the most punctual or tidy person in the world," but that when it came to peace work, she "would work harder and longer than anybody else." Hence, the title of my poem, "Night Labor."



Let Us Be Midwives!
by Hiroshima survivor Sadako Kurihara
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Midnight …
the basement of a shattered building …
atomic bomb survivors sniveling in the darkness …
not a single candle between them …
the odor of blood …
the stench of death …
the sickly-sweet smell of decaying humanity …
the groans …
the moans …
Out of all that, suddenly, miraculously, a voice:
"The baby's coming!"
In the hellish basement, unexpectedly,
a young mother has gone into labor.
In the dark, lacking a single match, what to do?
Scrambling to her side,
forgetting their own …

Hiroshima Shadows
by Michael R. Burch

Hiroshima shadows ... mother and child...
Oh, when will our hearts ever be beguiled
to end mindless war ... to seek peace,
                                                 reconciled
to our common mortality?



I have torn speech like a tattered robe and let words go;
you who are still dressed in your clothes, sleep on.
—Jalaluddin Rumi, translated by Jack Marshall

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

I am become Death [Shiva],
the Destroyer of Worlds.

Robert Oppenheimer, the Supervising Scientist of the Manhattan Project who has been called "the father of the atomic bomb," quoted these words from the poetry of the Bhagavad-Gita, after watching the first detonation of a nuclear weapon.

Our technology has exceeded our humanity.—Albert Einstein

Grasses wilt:
the braking locomotive
grinds to a halt
—Yamaguchi Seishi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



I don't know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.—Albert Einstein

Lucifer, to the Enola Gay
by Michael R. Burch

Go then, and give them my meaning
so that their teeming
streets
become my city.
Bring back a pretty
flower,
a chrysanthemum,
perhaps, to bloom
if but an hour,
within a certain room
of mine
where
the sun does not rise or fall,
and the moon,
although it is content to shine,
helps nothing at all.

There,
if I hear the wistful call
of their voices
regretting choices
made
or perhaps not made
in time,
I can look back upon it and recall,
in all its pale forms sublime,
still
Death will never be holy again.



How could I understand?
by Michael R. Burch

How could I understand
that light
might
be painful?

That sight
might
be crossed?

How could I understand
the cost
of my ignorance,
or the sun’s
inflorescence?

Who was there to tell me
that I, too,
might be one of the
Lost?



I expect to pass this way but once;
any good therefore that I can do,
or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature,
let me do it now.
Let me not defer or neglect it,
for I shall not pass this way again.
—Etienne Griellet



Excerpts from "Under Siege"
by Mahmoud Darwish
translated by Marjolijn De Jager

Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time
Close to the gardens of broken shadows,
We do what prisoners do,
And what the jobless do:
We cultivate hope.

A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent
For we closely watch the hour of victory:
No night in our night lit up by the shelling
Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us
In the darkness of cellars.

Here there is no "I".
Here Adam remembers the dust of his clay.

When the planes disappear, the white, white doves
Fly off and wash the cheeks of heaven
With unbound wings taking radiance back again, taking possession
Of the ether and of play. Higher, higher still, the white, white doves
Fly off. Ah, if only the sky
Were real [a man passing between two bombs said to me].

Alone, we are alone as far down as the sediment
Were it not for the visits of the rainbows.

Oh watchmen! Are you not weary
Of lying in wait for the light in our salt
And of the incandescence of the rose in our wound
Are you not weary, oh watchmen?

A little of this absolute and blue infinity
Would be enough
To lighten the burden of these times
And to cleanse the mire of this place.

Resisting means assuring oneself of the heart’s health,
The health of the testicles and of your tenacious disease:
The disease of hope.

Greetings to the one who shares with me an attention to
The drunkenness of light, the light of the butterfly, in the
Blackness of this tunnel!

Greetings to the one who shares my glass with me
In the denseness of a night outflanking the two spaces:
Greetings to my apparition.

My friends are always preparing a farewell feast for me,
A soothing grave in the shade of oak trees
A marble epitaph of time
And always I anticipate them at the funeral:
Who then has died...who?



Peace cannot be kept by force.
It can only be achieved by understanding.
—Albert Einstein



But what happens if we don't learn
from the voices of the past?
Of what use to the world
is a poet
or a prophet
whose words go unheeded? . . .
—Miklós Radnóti, a victim of the Holocaust, translated by Gina Gönczi



There never was a good war
nor a bad peace.
—Benjamin Franklin



War Close Up
by Hiroshima survivor Sadako Kurihara
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Stirring bugles! Rousing martial music!
The announcer reporting "victory"
like some messenger from on high,
fanning, fanning the fervored flames of battle!

Masterful state magicians materializing
in a wizardly procession,
spreading cleverly poisoned words
to bewilder reason!
Artistic expression abracadabra-ed into state-sponsored magic!

The sound of boots, guns, bombs, cannons
as our army advances, advances, advances toward the enemy!
The thunder of our invincible tanks advancing! Alleluia!
The sudden, sweet gurgles of drowning enemy ships!

The radio broadcasts the sounds of battle:
A war hymn resounding to the skies,
sung by courageous men and women
who worship this cruel idol, War.

Oh, so powerful the merest whiff
addles even the most independent spirit—
the opium of patriotism!
the religion of race!

While on scenic islands
scattered like stepping stones across the globe,
and on farflung continents,
driven by boundless avarice,
the landlords rage and rave again,
instilling hatred in indigenous populations
then prodding, driving them into battle.
Full of high-sounding pretexts
inevitably adapted to expediency
they raise indisputable banners—
God is on our side!
Righteous war!
Holy war!

"Right" becomes the password of thieves.
They square their shoulders:
"To secure world peace
annihilate
the evil opponent!"

They bark commands:
"For ten years, a hundred years,
fight to the last man, the last woman!"
The master magicians' martial music
resounds magisterially;
fanatic bull-mad patriots
roar and run amok;
completely bewitched, the people carol in unison:
"O, let me die by the side of my sweet Sovereign!"



We must extirpate false patriotic ideas from the minds of our youth, just as we must extirpate them from those of the false patriots, out of love for our mothers, the concept of the nation as Mother. How could she ever be our mother if, as you tell us, we have to give the last drop of our blood for her! We must be the sons of the true fatherland: the fatherland of love and equality.—Federico Garcia Lorca



The day the Cloud reigned
—Michael R. Burch

The sky was clear on Hiroshima,
sealing her fate.
The report of the weather plane,
neither early nor late,
was certainly plain.

The few innocuous clouds did not refrain
from abandoning the city.
Only the silence, monstrous in its complicity,
regarding man’s error
acknowledged the horror.

Only the small, astonished victims
understood the immaculate heavens:
the inconceivable light
igniting their bones;
the Cloud, all of a sudden,
billowing unbidden,
and then the apocalyptic rain
descending again and again.

So that where white chrysanthemums
had once whispered with bemused tongues
instantly only ashen ruins remained
the day the Cloud reigned.



If more politicians knew poetry,
and more poets knew politics,
I am convinced the world
would be a little better place to live.
—John Fitzgerald Kennedy