A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)
My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.
They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.
I want you to see this before I leave:
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said:
my bleeding is under control
A red plant in a cemetary of plastic wreaths.
A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say: those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.
To do something very common, in my own way.

A few random poems:
- Love thy Country and Do a useful Act – Gurazada by Vijay Narayana Chilaka
- Icicles round a Tree in Dumfriesshire by Ruth Padel
- Brooklyn Narcissus by Paul Blackburn
- Others, I Am Not the First poem – A. E. Housman
- Олег Бундур – Сорока
- Иван Бунин – Алёнушка
- Иван Киуру – Человек
- English Poetry. Adam Lindsay Gordon. The Rhyme of Joyous Garde. Адам Линдсей Гордон.
- My Soviet Passport by Vladimir Mayakovsky
- Repeat That, Repeat poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Федор Сологуб – Плачет безутешная вдова
- The Quest by W H Auden
- Epitaph On Johnson by William Cowper
- Lucky by Thomas Lux
- Николай Гумилев – Как труп, бессилен небосклон
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
- Sonnet 12
- Sonnet 11
- Sonnet 10
- Sonnet 08
- Sonnet 07
- Sonnet 06
- Sonnet 05
- Sonnet 04
- Sonnet 03
- Sonnet 02
- Sonnet 01
- Resurgam
- Rendezvous
- Paris
- On The Cliffs Newport
- On A Theme In The Greek Anthology
- Maktoob
- Lyonesse
- Liebestod
- La Nue
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
Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012) was an American poet, essayist, and feminist.