Ovid Translations

These are my English translations of Ovid, starting with two poems from the "Amores," followed by my translations of several stellar Ovid epigrams.

“The Amores” Book I, Elegy I: Cupid tunes his Meter to the Theme of Love
by Ovid
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Just as I was preparing to write of violent warfare,
with a heavy measure suited to war’s somber matter,
and with the second verse corresponding to the first,
Cupid smirked, then stole a foot away!

“Cruel boy, Cupid, who made you master of my song?
We poets are the Muses’, not your serfs!
What if Venus snatched golden-haired Minerva’s weaponry,
while golden-haired Minerva brandished love’s blazing firebrands?
Who’d approve of Ceres ruling wooded mountain ridges,
while cultivated fields quivered before the quivered Virgin?
Who’d dare arm Phoebus with his flowing locks
while Mars strummed his Aonian lyre?
You’ve far too much power, Cherub, too much sway,
and you’re far too ambitious. What the hell are you planning?
Or is everything everywhere already yours? Helicon’s metres?
Phoebus’s lyre? Does he no longer own it?
I was off to a clean start, with the first line on a fresh page,
when the second one lessened my resolve.
Alas, I’ve no theme fit for lighter numbers,
whether some handsome youth or elegant long-haired girl!”

I was arguing thus, as Cupid selected an arrow,
carefully weighed, to ensure my destruction,
then vigorously bent the bow against his knee,
crying, “Poet, here’s a subject suitable to your song!”

Woe is me! That godling has unerring arrows!
Now I burn and Love rules my once-disciplined heart.
Henceforth, let my verse commence in six beats, close in five:
farewell cruel warfare with your countermeasures!
I am destined to sing of Love in eleven feet.
Muse, garland your golden temples with Venus’s myrtle!

“The Amores” Book I, Elegy II: Darted!
by Ovid
translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Why can I say except that my mattress feels hard to me
and that my sheets and clothes keep tumbling to the floor
through these long, sleepless, endlessly tossing nights?
Why do my weary bones ache?
Why is my restless body wracked with pain?
But if I was being assailed by desire, surely I’d know it!
Certainly, Cupid’s crept in and wounded me with some secret art.
That’s it: a sliverous dart has found and lodged fast in my heart,
where cruel Love now commands my conquered breast.

OVID EPIGRAMS

Beauty is a fragile ornament.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The prickliest thorns protect the tenderest roses.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fallow fields become more fertile, so be sure to get your rest.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Once shipwrecked, men shudder at a calm sea.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Death is less bitter than its delay or denial.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Peace becomes men; violence belongs to the beasts.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A clean wick burns brightest.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Well-borne burdens lighten.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Petty things please petty minds.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Envy eyes the exalted.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love and dignity are incompatible.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love is siege warfare.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Every lover's a soldier camping with Cupid.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

He who remains unnoticed has lived admirably.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Habits hone character.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A steady drip hollows rocks.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Go all out or give out.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Go all out or stay put.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His workmanship surpassed his subject.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Everyone's rich in promises.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We're all millionaires where promises are exchanged.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We're all millionaires where promises are concerned.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Venus adores the daring.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Luck and love favor the brave.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

If you would be loved, first be lovable.—Ovid translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It’s easy to believe you’ve braved Cupid’s arrows, seeing the scars they’ve left in me!—Ovid “The Amores” translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What if Venus snatched golden Minerva’s weaponry, while golden Minerva fanned love’s flames? —Ovid “The Amores” translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



AFTER OVID: ORIGINAL POEMS



Preposterous Eros
by Michael R. Burch

“Preposterous Eros” – Patricia Falanga

Preposterous Eros shot me in
the buttocks, with a Devilish grin,
spent all my money in a rush
then left my heart effete pink mush.



What Goes Around, Comes
by Michael R. Burch

This is a poem about loss
so why do you toss your dark hair—
unaccountably glowing?

How can you be sure of my heart
when it’s beyond my own knowing?

Or is it love’s pheromones you trust,
my eyes magnetized by your bust
and the mysterious alchemies of lust?

Now I am truly lost!
his implausible blossom her wild rains of kisses decreed.



Lozenge
by Michael R. Burch

When I was closest to love, it did not seem
real at all, but a thing of such tenuous sweetness
it might dissolve in my mouth
like a lozenge of sugar.

When I held you in my arms, I did not feel
our lack of completeness,
knowing how easy it was
for us to cling to each other.

And there were nights when the clouds
sped across the moon’s face,
exposing such rarified brightness
we did not witness

so much as embrace
love’s human appearance.



Burn, Ovid
by Michael R. Burch

“Burn Ovid”—Austin Clarke

Sunday School,
Faith Free Will Baptist, 1973:
I sat imaging watery folds
of pale silk encircling her waist.
Explicit sex was the day’s “hot” topic
(how breathlessly I imagined hers)
as she taught us the perils of lust
fraught with inhibition.

I found her unaccountably beautiful,
rolling implausible nouns off the edge of her tongue:
adultery, fornication, masturbation, sodomy.
Acts made suddenly plausible by the faint blush
of her unrouged cheeks,
by her pale lips
accented only by a slight quiver,
a trepidation.

What did those lustrous folds foretell
of our uncommon desire?
Why did she cross and uncross her legs
lovely and long in their taupe sheaths?
Why did her breasts rise pointedly,
as if indicating a direction?

“Come unto me,
(unto me),”
together, we sang,

cheek to breast,
lips on lips,
devout, afire,

my hands
up her skirt,
her pants at her knees:

all night long,
all night long,
in the heavenly choir.



Sex 101
by Michael R. Burch

That day the late spring heat
steamed through the windows of a Crayola-yellow schoolbus
crawling its way up the backwards slopes
of Nowheresville, North Carolina…

Where we sat exhausted
from the day’s skulldrudgery
and the unexpected waves of muggy,
summer-like humidity…

Giggly first graders sat two abreast
behind senior high students
sprouting their first sparse beards,
their implausible bosoms, their stranger affections ...

The most unlikely coupling—

Lambert, 18, the only college prospect
on the varsity basketball team,
the proverbial talldarkhandsome
swashbuckling cocksman, grinning…

Beside him, Wanda, 13,
bespectacled, in her primproper attire
and pigtails, staring up at him,
fawneyed, disbelieving…

And as the bus filled with the improbable musk of her,
as she twitched impaled on his finger
like a dead frog jarred to life by electrodes,
I knew

that love is a forlorn enterprise,
that I would never understand it.



Negligibles
by Michael R. Burch

Show me your most intimate items of apparel;
begin with the hem of your quicksilver slip…



Warming Her Pearls
by Michael R. Burch

Warming her pearls,
her breasts gleam like constellations.
Her belly is a bit rotund…
she might have stepped out of a Rubens.



Are You the Thief
by Michael R. Burch

When I touch you now,
O sweet lover,
full of fire,
melting like ice
in my embrace…

when I part the delicate white lace,
baring pale flesh,
and your face
is so close
that I breathe your breath
and your hair surrounds me like a wreath…

tell me now,
O sweet, sweet lover,
in good faith:
are you the thief
who has stolen my heart?



Righteous
by Michael R. Burch

Come to me tonight
in the twilight, O, and the full moon rising,
spectral and ancient, will mutter a prayer.

Gather your hair
and pin it up, knowing
that I will release it a moment anon.

We are not one,
nor is there a scripture
to sanctify nights you might spend in my arms,

but the swarms
of stars revolving above us
revel tonight, the most ardent of lovers.



The Secret of Her Clothes
by Michael R. Burch

The secret of her clothes
is that they whisper a little mysteriously
of things unseen

in the language of nylon and cotton,
so that when she walks
to her amorous drawers

to rummage among the embroidered hearts
and rumors of pastel slips
for a white wisp of Victorian lace,

the delicate rustle of fabric on fabric,
the slightest whisper of telltale static,
electrifies me.

Published by Erosha, Velvet Avalanche (Anthology) and Poetry Life & Times



Duet, Minor Key
by Michael R. Burch

Without the drama of cymbals
or the fanfare and snares of drums,
I present my case
stripped of its fine veneer:
Behold, thy instrument.

Play, for the night is long.



Retro
by Michael R. Burch

Now, once again,
love’s a redundant pleasure,
as we laugh
at my childish fumblings
through the acres of your dress,
past your wily-wired brassiere,
through your panties’ pink billows
of thrill-piqued frills…

Till I lay once again—panting redfaced
at your gayest lack of resistance,
and, later, at your milktongued
mewlings in the dark…

When you were virginal,
sweet as eucalyptus,
we did not understand
the miracle of repentance,
and I took for granted
your obsessive distance…

But now I am happily unbuttoning
that chaste dress,
unhitching that firm-latched bra,
tugging at those parachute-like panties—
the ones you would have gladly forgotten
had I not bought them in this year’s size.



Cycles
by Michael R. Burch

I see his eyes caress my daughter’s breasts
through her thin cotton dress,
and how an indiscreet strap of her white bra
holds his bald fingers
in fumbling mammalian awe…

And I remember long cycles into the bruised dusk
of a distant park,
hot blushes,
wild, disembodied rushes of blood,
portentous intrusions of lips, tongues and fingers…

and now in him the memory of me lingers
like something thought rancid,
proved rotten.
I see Another again—hard, staring, and silent—
though long-ago forgotten…

And I remember conjectures of panty lines,
brief flashes of white down bleacher stairs,
coarse patches of hair glimpsed in bathroom mirrors,
all the odd, questioning stares…

Yes, I remember it all now,
and I shoo them away,
willing them not to play too long or too hard
in the back yard—
with a long, ineffectual stare

that years from now, he may suddenly remember.



Longing
by Michael R. Burch

We stare out at the cold gray sea,
                               overcome
by such sudden and intense longing…
our eyes meet,
                         inviolate,
and we are not of this earth,
this strange, inert mass.

Before we crept
out of the shoals of the inchoate sea,
before we grew
the quaint appendages
and orifices of love…

before our jellylike nuclei,
struggling to be hearts,
                                   leapt
at the sight of that first bright, oracular sun,
then watched it plummet,
the birth and death of our illumination…

before we wept…
before we knew…
before our unformed hearts grew numb,
                                                             again,
in the depths of the sea’s indecipherable darkness . . .

When we were only
a swirling profusion of recombinant things
wafting loose silt from the sea’s soft floor,
writhing and sucking in convulsive beds
of mucousy foliage,

flowering,
               flowering,
                               flowering…

what jolted us to life?



The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch

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.



Progress
by Michael R. Burch

There is no sense of urgency
at the local Burger King.

Birds and squirrels squabble outside
for the last scraps of autumn:
remnants of buns,
goopy pulps of dill pickles,
mucousy lettuce,
sesame seeds.

Inside, the workers all move
with the same très-glamorous lethargy,
conserving their energy, one assumes,
for more pressing endeavors: concerts and proms,
pep rallies, keg parties,
reruns of Jenny McCarthy on MTV.

The manager, as usual, is on the phone,
talking to her boyfriend.
She gently smiles,
brushing back wisps of insouciant hair,
ready for the cover of Glamour or Vogue.

Through her filmy white blouse
an indiscreet strap
suspends a lace cup
through which somehow the nipple still shows.
Progress, we guess, ...

and wait patiently in line,
hoping the Pokémons hold out.



I Loved You
by Alexander Pushkin, a Russian poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I loved you ... perhaps I love you still ...
perhaps for a while such emotions may remain.
But please don't let my feelings trouble you;
I do not wish to cause you further pain.

I loved you ... thus the hopelessness I knew ...
The jealousy, the diffidence, the pain
resulted in two hearts so wholly true
the gods might grant us leave to love again.



Ben Sana Mecburum: "You are indispensable"
by Attila Ilhan
loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch

You are indispensable; how can you not know
that you're like nails riveting my brain?
I see your eyes as ever-expanding dimensions.
You are indispensable; how can you not know
that I burn within, at the thought of you?

Trees prepare themselves for autumn;
can this city be our lost Istanbul?
Now clouds disintegrate in the darkness
as the street lights flicker
and the streets reek with rain.
You are indispensable, and yet you are absent ...

Love sometimes seems akin to terror:
a man tires suddenly at nightfall,
of living enslaved to the razor at his neck.
Sometimes he wrings his hands,
expunging other lives from his existence.
Sometimes whichever door he knocks
echoes back only heartache.

A screechy phonograph is playing in Fatih ...
a song about some Friday long ago.
I stop to listen from a vacant corner,
longing to bring you an untouched sky,
but time disintegrates in my hands.
Whatever I do, wherever I go,
you are indispensable, and yet you are absent ...

Are you the blue child of June?
Ah, no one knows you—no one knows!
Your deserted eyes are like distant freighters ...
perhaps you are boarding in Yesilköy?
Are you drenched there, shivering with the rain
that leaves you blind, beset, broken,
with wind-disheveled hair?

Whenever I think of life
seated at the wolves' table,
shameless, yet without soiling our hands ...
Yes, whenever I think of life,
I begin with your name, defying the silence,
and your secret tides surge within me
making this voyage inevitable.
You are indispensable; how can you not know?



Best wishes for an impending deflowering
by W. S. Rendra
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Best wishes for an impending deflowering

Yes, I understand: you will never be mine.
I am resigned to my undeserved fate.
I contemplate
irrational numbers—complex & undefined.

And yet I wish love might ... ameliorate ...
such negative numbers, dark and unsigned.

But at least I can’t be held responsible
for disappointing you. No cause to elate.
Still, I am resigned to my undeserved fate.
The gods have spoken. I can relate.

How can this be, when all it makes no sense?
I was born too soon—such was my fate.
You must choose another, not half of who I AM.
Be happy with him when you consummate.



THE WORLD'S FIRST FACE
by W. S. Rendra
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Illuminated by the pale moonlight
the groom carries his bride
up the hill—
both of them naked,
both consisting of nothing but themselves.

As in all beginnings
the world is naked,
empty, free of deception,
dark with unspoken explanations—
a silence that extends
to the limits of time.

Then comes light,
life, the animals and man.

As in all beginnings
everything is naked,
empty, open.

They're both young,
yet both have already come a long way,
passing through the illusions of brilliant dawns,
of skies illuminated by hope,
of rivers intimating contentment.

They have experienced the sun's warmth,
drenched in each other's sweat.

Here, standing by barren reefs,
they watch evening fall
bringing strange dreams
to a bed arrayed with resplendent coral necklaces.

They lift their heads to view
trillions of stars arrayed in the sky.
The universe is their inheritance:
stars upon stars upon stars,
more than could ever be extinguished.

Illuminated by the pale moonlight
the groom carries his bride
up the hill—
both of them naked,
to recreate the world's first face.



Love Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I do not love you like coral or topaz,
or the blazing hearth's incandescent white flame;
I love you like phantoms embraced in the dark ...
secretly, in shadows, unrevealed & unnamed.

I love you like bushes that refuse to bloom
while pregnant with the radiance of mysterious flowers;
now, thanks to your love, an earthy fragrance
lives dimly in my body's odors.

I love you without knowing—how, when, why or where;
I love you forthrightly, without complications or care;
I love you this way because I know no other.

Here, where "I" no longer exists ... so it seems ...
so close that your hand on my chest is my own,
so close that your eyes close gently on my dreams.



A Courtesan's Love Lyric
by Veronica Franco
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My rewards will be commensurate with your gifts
if only you give me the one that lifts
me laughing ...

And though it costs you nothing,
still it is of immense value to me.

Your reward will be
not just to fly
but to soar, so high
that your joys vastly exceed your desires.

And my beauty, to which your heart aspires
and which you never tire of praising,
I will employ for the raising
of your spirits. Then, lying sweetly at your side,
I will shower you with all the delights of a bride,
which I have more expertly learned.

Then you who so fervently burned
will at last rest, fully content,
fallen even more deeply in love, spent
at my comfortable bosom.

When I am in bed with a man I blossom,
becoming completely free
with the man who loves and enjoys me.



Millay Has Her Way with a Vassar Professor
by Michael R. Burch

After a night of hard drinking and spreading her legs,
Millay hits the dorm, where the Vassar don begs:
“Please act more chastely, more discretely, more seemly!”
(His name, let’s assume, was, er . . . Percival Queemly.)

“Expel me! Expel me!”—She flashes her eyes.
“Oh! Please! No! I couldn’t! That wouldn’t be wise,
for a great banished Shelley would tarnish my name . . .
Eek! My game will be lame if I can’t milque your fame!”

“Continue to live here—carouse as you please!”
the beleaguered don sighs as he sags to his knees.
Millay grinds her crotch half an inch from his nose:
“I can live in your hellhole, strange man, I suppose ...
but the price is your firstborn, whom I’ll sacrifice to Moloch.”
(Which explains what became of pale Percy’s son, Enoch.)



how many Nights (i)
by michael r. burch

how many Nights we laughed to see the sun
       go
down ...
your hair a frightful, dizzy golden crown ...
your skirt up to your thighs, displaying these
and others of men’s baser fantasies ...
that little pouting flower, slightly parted,
with nothing intervening, nothing thwarted ...



how many Nights (ii)
by michael r. burch

how many Nights we laughed to see the sun
       go
down ...
because the Night was made for reckless fun.
Your golden crown,
Your skin so soft, so smooth, and lightly downed.

how many nights i wept glad tears to hold
You tight against the years.
Your eyes so bold,
Your hair spun gold,
and all the pleasures Your soft flesh foretold.

how many Nights i did not dare to dream
You were so real ...
now all that i have left here is to feel
in dreams surreal
Time is the Nightmare God before whom men kneel.

and how few Nights, i reckoned, in the end,
we were allowed to gather, less to spend.



The Perfect Courtesan
by Michael R. Burch

after Baudelaire, for the courtesans

She received me into her cavities,
indulging my darkest depravities
with such trembling longing, I felt her need ...

Such was the dalliance to which we agreed—
she, my high rider;
I, her wild steed.

She surrendered her all, revealing to me—
the willing handmaiden, delighted to please,
the Perfect Courtesan of Ecstasy.



Sweet Nothings
by Michael R. Burch

Tonight, will you whisper me a sweet enchantment?

We’ll take my motorcycle, blaze a trail of metallic exhaust and scorched-black sulphuric fumes to a tawdry diner where I’ll slip my fingers under your yellow sun dress, inside the elastic waist band of your thin white cotton panties, till your pinkling lips moisten obligingly and the corpulent pink hot dog with tangy brown mustard and sweet pickle relish comes.

Tonight, can we talk about something other than sex, perhaps things we both love?

What I love is to go to the beach, where the hot oil smells like baking coconuts, and lie in the sun’s humidor thinking of you, while the sand worms its way inside your sexy little pink bikini, your compressed breasts squishy with warm sweet milk like coconuts, the hair between your legs sleek as a wet mink’s ...

Tonight, can we make love instead of just talking dirty?

Sorry, honey, I’m just not in the mood.



Less Heroic Couplets: In Love and Other Disasters
by Michael R. Burch

after Ovid

in love and other disasters
wee’re ruled by the cruellest of Masters.

why do gaudlings like Eros and Cupid
issue orders so stupid:
“fall in love with the one who’ll bankrupt u
and cause u to wail and boo-hoo!”

mean-while, at a much higher level,
wee’re ruled Yahweh and the Devil,
caught in their cruel tuggings of war
with no greater Gauds to implore.

“tho(u) shalt not kill!!!
genocide?
if they’re the Devil’s, I take it in stride.
let love hit the skids.
hell, murder their kids!
then I’ll burn them in hell where my Enemy reigns,
rather than saving.
Christ! why take such pains?”

meanwhile wee’ll be Dev’lishly tempted
by porn, love once again preempted.
yes, in love and all other disasters
wee’re ruled by the cruellest of Masters.



Psycho Analysis
by Michael R. Burch

This is not what I need . . .
analysis,
paralysis,
as though I were a seed
to be planted,
supported
with a stick and some string
until I emerge.
Your words
are not water. I need something
more nourishing,
like cherishing,
something essential, like love
so that when I climb
out of the lime
and the mulch. When I shove
myself up
from the muck . . .
we can fuck.