by Alden Nowlan
A mysterious naked man has been reported
on Cranston Avenue. The police are performing
the usual ceremonies with coloured lights and sirens.
Almost everyone is outdoors and strangers are conversing
excitedly
as they do during disasters when their involvement is
peripheral.
‘What did he look like? ‘ the lieutenant is asking.
‘I don’t know, ‘ says the witness. ‘He was naked.’
There is talk of dogs-this is no ordinary case
of indecent exposure, the man has been seen
a dozen times since the milkman spotted him and now
the sky is turning purple and voices
carry a long way and the children
have gone a little crazy as they often do at dusk
and cars are arriving
from other sections of the city.
And the mysterious naked man
is kneeling behind a garbage can or lying on his belly
in somebody’s garden
or maybe even hiding in the branches of a tree,
where the wind from the harbour
whips at his naked body,
and by now he’s probably done
whatever it was he wanted to do
and wishes he could go to sleep
or die
or take to the air like Superman.

A few random poems:
- Ольга Берггольц – Триптих 1949 года
- In The Arc Of Your Mallet by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- haiku
- To the Fringed Gentian by William Cullen Bryant
- A Fixed Idea poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Gardener LXXXI: Why Do You Whisper So Faintly by Rabindranath Tagore
- Eclogue V by Virgil
- Юнна Мориц – Страна вагонная, вагонное терпенье
- St Patrick’s Day by Michael McGovern
- Conversation with Comrade Lenin by Vladimir Mayakovsky
- The Piano-Organ poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Less Than The Dust
- Михаил Лермонтов – Челнок (Воет ветр и свистит пред недальной грозой)
- Written In Early Youth. The Time,–An Autumnal Evening by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Федор Сваровский – Пилот и Биби Хлотрос
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- Hope And Riders
- Do I
- Communal War
- Blank Dreams
- Before
- Again
- A Voice
- A Toast To Nations
- What Of The Night
- Vows
- To Morrow
- The Winged Mariners
- The Watchman
- The Virgin Martyr
- The Vain Question
- The Soldiers Grave
- The Silence In The Church
- The Season
- The Resting Place
- The Old Manor House
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works