Home ⇒ 📌Michael Burch ⇒ Auschwitz Rose
Auschwitz Rose
There is a Rose at Auschwitz, in the briar,
A rose like Sharon’s, lovely as her name.
The world forgot her,
and is not the same.
I love her and would not forget desire,
But keep her memory exalted flame
To justify the thistles and the nettles.
On Auschwitz now the reddening sunset settles;
They sleep alike diminutive and tall,
The innocent, the “surgeons.”
Sleeping, all.
Red oxides of her blood, bright crimson petals,
If accidents of coloration, gall
My heart no less.
Amid thick weeds and muck
There grows a rose no man shall ever pluck
Till he beds there, and bids the world “Good Luck.”
Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- Rose Leaves When they shall close my careless eyes And look their last upon my face, I fear that some will say: “her lies A man of deep disgrace; His thoughts were bare, his words were brittle, He dreamed so much, he did so little. When they shall seal y coffin lid And this worn mask I […]...
- Sea Rose Rose, harsh rose, Marred and with stint of petals, Meagre flower, thin, Sparse of leaf, More precious Than a wet rose Single on a stem You are caught in the drift. Stunted, with small leaf, You are flung on the sand, You are lifted In the crisp sand That drives in the wind. Can the […]...
- The Last Rose ‘O WHICH is the last rose?’ A blossom of no name. At midnight the snow came; At daybreak a vast rose, In darkness unfurl’d, O’er-petall’d the world. Its odourless pallor Blossom’d forlorn, Till radiant valour Establish’d the morn Till the night Was undone In her fight With the sun. The brave orb in state rose, […]...
- She Gathered Lilacs, for Beth She gathered lilacs And arrayed them in her hair; Tonight, she taught the wind to be free. She kept her secrets In a silver locket; Her companions were starlight and mystery. She danced all night To the beat of her heart; With her tears she imbued the sea. She hid her despair In a crystal […]...
- Stanzas to the Rose SWEET PICTURE of Life’s chequer’d hour! Ah, wherefore droop thy blushing head? Tell me, oh tell me, hap’less flow’r, Is it because thy charms are fled? Come, gentle ROSE, and learn from me A lesson of Philosophy. Thy scented buds, LIFE’S joys disclose; They strew our paths with magic sweets; Where many a thorn like […]...
- She sped as Petals of a Rose She sped as Petals of a Rose Offended by the Wind A frail Aristocrat of Time Indemnity to find Leaving on nature a Default As Cricket or as Bee But Andes in the Bosoms where She had begun to lie...
- Charon 2004 I, too, have stood paralyzed at the helm Watching onrushing, inevitable disaster. I too have felt sweat (or ecstatic tears) plaster Damp hair to my eyes, as a slug’s dense film Becomes mucous-insulate. Always, thereafter Living in darkness, bright things overwhelm. Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea...
- The Rose and the Cross Out of the seething cauldron of my woes, Where sweets and salt and bitterness I flung; Where charmed music gathered from my tongue, And where I chained strange archipelagoes Of fallen stars; where fiery passion flows A curious bitumen; where among The glowing medley moved the tune unsung Of perfect love: thence grew the Mystic […]...
- After Auschwitz Anger, As black as a hook, Overtakes me. Each day, Each Nazi Took, at 8:00 A. M., a baby And sauteed him for breakfast In his frying pan. And death looks on with a casual eye And picks at the dirt under his fingernail. Man is evil, I say aloud. Man is a flower That […]...
- The Wedding of the Rose and the Lotos The wide Pacific waters And the Atlantic meet. With cries of joy they mingle, In tides of love they greet. Above the drowned ages A wind of wooing blows: – The red rose woos the lotos, The lotos woos the rose. . . The lotos conquered Egypt. The rose was loved in Rome. Great India […]...
- Water and Gold You came to me as rain breaks on the desert When every flower springs to life at once, But joy is an illusion to the expert: The Bedouin has learned how not to want. You came to me as riches to a miser When all is gold, or so his heart believes, Until he dies […]...
- The Sick Rose O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm. That flies in the night In the howling storm: Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy....
- The Rose Family The rose is a rose, And was always a rose. But the theory now goes That the apple’s a rose, And the pear is, and so’s The plum, I suppose. The dear only know What will next prove a rose. You, of course, are a rose But were always a rose....
- Pan … Among the shadows of the groaning elms, Amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves… … Once there were paths that led to coracles That clung to piers like loosening barnacles… … where we cannot return, because we lost The pebbles and the playthings, and the moss… … hangs weeping gently downward, maidens’ hair Who […]...
- The Locker All the dull hollow clamor has died And what was contained, Removed, Reproved Adulation or sentiment, Left with the pungent darkness As remembered as the sudden light. Originally published by The Raintown Review...
- A Dead Rose O Rose! who dares to name thee? No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet; But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubble-wheat, – Kept seven years in a drawer – thy titles shame thee. The breeze that used to blow thee Between the hedgerow thorns, and take away An odour up the lane to […]...
- At Wilfred Owen's Grave A week before the Armistice, you died. They did not keep your heart like Livingstone’s, Then plant your bones near Shakespeare’s. So you lie Between two privates, sacrificed like Christ To politics, your poetry unknown Except for that brief flurry’s: thirteen months With Gaukroger beside you in the trench, Dismembered, as you babbled, as the […]...
- Rainbow (II) You made us hopeful, LORD; where is your Hope When every lovely Rainbow bright and chill Reflects your Will? You made us artful, LORD; where is your Art, As we connive our way to easeful death: Sad waste of Breath! You made us needful, LORD; what is your Need, When all desire lies in imperfection? […]...
- The Rose Of Battle Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurled Above the tide of hours, trouble the air, And God’s bell buoyed to be the water’s care; While hushed from fear, or loud with hope, a band With blown, spray-dabbled hair gather at hand, Turn if you may from […]...
- Fahr an' Ice, Apologies to Robert Frost From what I know of death, I’ll side with those Who’d like to have a say in how it goes: Just make mine cool, cool rocks (twice drowned in likker), And real fahr off, instead of quicker. Originally published by Light Quarterly...
- To Flower When Pentheus [“grief’] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, 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 […]...
- MY PERFECT ROSE At ten she came to me, three years ago, There was ‘something between us’ even then; Watching her write like Eliot every day, Turn prose into haiku in ten minutes flat, Write a poem in Greek three weeks from learning the alphabet; Then translate it as ‘Sun on a tomb, gold place, small sacred horse’. […]...
- To The Rose Upon The Rood Of Time Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days! Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways: Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide; The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed, Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold; And thine own sadness, where of stars, grown old In dancing silver-sandalled on the sea, Sing in […]...
- Tremble Her predatory eye, The single feral iris, Scans. Her raptor beak, All jagged sharp-edged thrust, Juts. Her hard talon, Clenched in pinched expectation, Waits. Her clipped wings, Preened against reality, Tremble. Originally published by The Lyric...
- One Perfect Rose A single flow’r he sent me, since we met. All tenderly his messenger he chose; Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet – One perfect rose. I knew the language of the floweret; ‘My fragile leaves,’ it said, ‘his heart enclose.’ Love long has taken for his amulet One perfect rose. Why is it no […]...
- 195. Song-A Rose-bud by my Early Walk A ROSE-BUD by my early walk, Adown a corn-enclosed bawk, Sae gently bent its thorny stalk, All on a dewy morning. Ere twice the shades o’ dawn are fled, In a’ its crimson glory spread, And drooping rich the dewy head, It scents the early morning. Within the bush her covert nest A little linnet […]...
- Because Her Heart Is Tender, for Beth She scrawled soft words in soap: “Never Forget,” Dove-white on her car’s window, and the wren, Because her heart is tender, might regret It called the sun to wake her. As I slept, She heard lost names recounted, one by one. She wrote in sidewalk chalk: “Never Forget,” And kept her heart’s own counsel. No […]...
- A Little Budding Rose It was a little budding rose, Round like a fairy globe, And shyly did its leaves unclose Hid in their mossy robe, But sweet was the slight and spicy smell It breathed from its heart invisible. The rose is blasted, withered, blighted, Its root has felt a worm, And like a heart beloved and slighted, […]...
- The Rose Tree ‘O words are lightly spoken,’ Said Pearse to Connolly, ‘Maybe a breath of politic words Has withered our Rose Tree; Or maybe but a wind that blows Across the bitter sea.’ ‘It needs to be but watered,’ James Connolly replied, ‘To make the green come out again And spread on every side, And shake the […]...
- The Folly of Wisdom She is wise in the way that children are wise, Looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes I must bend down to her to understand. But she only smiles, and takes my hand. We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go, So I smile, and I follow… And the years are dark […]...
- The Grave and The Rose The Grave said to the Rose, “What of the dews of dawn, Love’s flower, what end is theirs?” “And what of spirits flown, The souls whereon doth close The tomb’s mouth unawares?” The Rose said to the Grave. The Rose said, “In the shade From the dawn’s tears is made A perfume faint and strange, […]...
- O Gather Me the Rose O gather me the rose, the rose, While yet in flower we find it, For summer smiles, but summer goes, And winter waits behind it. For with the dream foregone, foregone, The deed foreborn forever, The worm Regret will canker on, And time will turn him never. So were it well to love, my love, […]...
- The Rose Of The World Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? For these red lips, with all their mournful pride, Mournful that no new wonder may betide, Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, And Usna’s children died. We and the labouring world are passing by: Amid men’s souls, that waver and give place Like the pale […]...
- A full fed Rose on meals of Tint A full fed Rose on meals of Tint A Dinner for a Bee In process of the Noon became – Each bright Mortality The Forfeit is of Creature fair Itself, adored before Submitting for our unknown sake To be esteemed no more...
- The Desk, for Jeremy There is a child I used to know Who sat, perhaps, at this same desk Where you sit now, and made a mess Of things sometimes. I wonder how He learned at all… He saw T-Rexes down the hall And dreamed of trains and cars and wrecks. He dribbled phantom basketballs, Shot spitwads at his […]...
- The Watch Moonlight spills down vacant sills, Illuminates an empty bed. Dreams lie in crates. One hand creates Wan silver circles, left unread By its companion unmoved now By anything that lies ahead. I watch the minutes test the limits Of ornamental movement here, Where once another hand would hover. Each circuit incomplete. So dear, So precious, […]...
- The Rose of Midnight THE moon is now an opening flower, The sky a cliff of blue. The moon is now a silver rose; Her pollen is the dew. Her pollen is the mist that swings Across her face of dreams: Her pollen is the April rain, Filling the April streams. Her pollen is eternal life, Endless ambrosial foam. […]...
- The City Is A Garment A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light,- The city is a garment stretched so thin Her festive colors bleed into the night, And everywhere bright seams, unraveling, Now spill their brilliant contents out like coins On motorways and esplanades; bead cars Come tumbling down long highways; at her groin A railtrack like a zipper […]...
- Stupidity Dearest, forgive that with my clumsy touch I broke and bruised your rose. I hardly could suppose It were a thing so fragile that my clutch Could kill it, thus. It stood so proudly up upon its stem, I knew no thought of fear, And coming very near Fell, overbalanced, to your garment’s hem, Tearing […]...
- The Lover Tells Of The Rose In His Heart All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart. The wrong of unshapely things is […]...