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:
- Валерий Брюсов – После ночи бессонной
- Ольга Берггольц – Как на озёрном хуторе
- Stray Colors by Satish Verma
- Robert Burns: She’s Fair And Fause:
- Sonnet CXIII by William Shakespeare
- Book Thirteenth [Imagination And Taste, How Impaired And Restored Concluded] by William Wordsworth
- Владимир Высоцкий – И в Дубне, и на Таганке что-то ставят, что-то строят
- Crocodile’s Toothache by Shel Silverstein
- To A Poet, Who Would Have Me Praise Certain Bad Poets, Imitators Of His And Mine by William Butler Yeats
- The joyful things in life by Martin Smith
- Василий Казин – Каменщик
- The Choral Union by Siegfried Sassoon
- A Jewish Family In A Small Valley Opposite St. Goar, Upon The Rhine by William Wordsworth
- Black Pine Tree In An Orange Light by Sylvia Plath
- The Hunter by Shel Silverstein
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
- A Paralell Between Bowling And Preferment by William Strode
- A New Year’s Gift by William Strode
- A Necklace by William Strode
- A Lover To His Mistress by William Strode
- A Girdle by William Strode
- Yesterday by W. S. Merwin
- Wish by W. S. Merwin
- Whenever I Go There by W. S. Merwin
- When You Go Away by W. S. Merwin
- Vehicles by W. S. Merwin
- Unknown Bird by W. S. Merwin
- The Speed Of Light by W. S. Merwin
- The Source by W. S. Merwin
- The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence by W. S. Merwin
- The River Of Bees by W. S. Merwin
- The Burnt Child by W. S. Merwin
- Term by W. S. Merwin
- Some Last Questions by W. S. Merwin
- One of the Lives by W. S. Merwin
- On the Subject of Poetry by W. S. Merwin
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
