A poem by Alistar Crowley (1875-1947)
El Arabi! El Arabi! Burn in thy brilliance, mine own!
O Beautiful! O Barbarous! Seductive as a serpent is
That poises head and hood, and makes his body tremble to the drone
Of tom-tom and of cymbal wooed by love’s assassin sorceries!
El Arabi! El Arabi!
The moon is down; we are alone;
May not our mouths meet, madden, mix, melt in the starlight of a kiss?
El Arabi!
There by the palms, the desert’s edge, I drew thee to my heart and held
Thy shy slim beauty for a splendid second; and fell moaning back,
Smitten by Love’s forked flashing rod -as if the uprooted mandrake yelled!
As if I had seen God, and died! I thirst! I writhe upon the rack!
El Arabi! El Arabi!
It is not love! I am compelled
By some fierce fate, a vulture poised, heaven’s single ominous speck of black.
El Arabi!
There in the lonely bordj across the dreadful lines of sleeping men,
Swart sons of the Sahara, thou didst writhe slim, sinuous and swift,
Warning me with a viper’s hiss -and was not death upon us then,
No bastard of thy maiden kiss? God’s grace, the all-surpassing gift!
El Arabi! El Arabi!
Yea, death is man’s Elixir when
Life’s pale wine foams and splashes over his imagination’s rim!
El Arabi!
El Arabi! El Arabi! witch-amber and obsidian
Thine eyes are, to ensorcell me, and leonine thy male caress.
Will not God grant us Paradise to end the music Earth began?
We play with loaded dice! He cannot choose but raise right hand to bless.
El Arabi! El Arabi!
Great is the love of God and man
While I am trembling in thine arms, wild wanderer of the wilderness!
El Arabi!
A few random poems:
- To His Mistress In Absence by Torquato Tasso
- Epitaph on a Lap-dog by Robert Burns
- The Vision poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Sleep by Russell Edson
- Exit by Rita Dove
- To England At The Outbreak Of The Balkan War
- Youth And Age by William Butler Yeats
- Ольга Берггольц – Тост
- Venus, on a fur by Witty Fay
- The Drunkards in the Street by Vachel Lindsay
- The Sad Shepherd by William Butler Yeats
- The Humstrum by William Barnes
- Robert Burns: Lines On The Author’s Death: Written With The Supposed View Of Being Handed To Rankine After The Poet’s Interment
- Николай Тихонов – Как след от весла
- Владимир Агатов – Бессмертный Ленинград
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
- Daybreak In A Garden by Siegfried Sassoon
- David Cleek by Siegfried Sassoon
- Counter-Attack by Siegfried Sassoon
- Conscripts by Siegfried Sassoon
- Concert Party by Siegfried Sassoon
- Companions by Siegfried Sassoon
- Butterflies by Siegfried Sassoon
- Break of Day by Siegfried Sassoon
- Bombardment by Siegfried Sassoon
- Blind by Siegfried Sassoon
- Blighters by Siegfried Sassoon
- Before the Battle by Siegfried Sassoon
- Before Day by Siegfried Sassoon
- Battalion-Relief by Siegfried Sassoon
- Base Details by Siegfried Sassoon
- Banishment by Siegfried Sassoon
- Autumn by Siegfried Sassoon
- Attack by Siegfried Sassoon
- At Daybreak by Siegfried Sassoon
- At Carnoy by Siegfried Sassoon
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
