A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000)
by Alec Derwent Hope
A Nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey
In the field uniform of modern wars,
Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws
Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away.
They call her a young country, but they lie:
She is the last of lands, the emptiest,
A woman beyond her change of life, a breast
Still tender but within the womb is dry.
Without songs, architecture, history:
The emotions and superstitions of younger lands,
Her rivers of water drown among inland sands,
The river of her immense stupidity
Floods her monotonous tribes from Cairns to Perth.
In them at last the ultimate men arrive
Whose boast is not: “we live” but “we survive”,
A type who will inhabit the dying earth.
And her five cities, like five teeming sores,
Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state
Where second hand Europeans pullulate
Timidly on the edge of alien shores.
Yet there are some like me turn gladly home
From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find
The Arabian desert of the human mind,
Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come,
Such savage and scarlet as no green hills dare
Springs in that waste, some spirit which escapes
The learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes
Which is called civilization over there.
A few random poems:
- Lament For The Makers By William Dunbar
- Mine Sweepers by Rudyard Kipling
- what a poet must do by Raj Arumugam
- A Good Boy by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Владимир Британишский – Горы, горы – горизонты
- Robert Burns: To A Mountain Daisy: On turning down with the Plough, in April, 1786.
- Victor
- The Despair
- Flowers Of The Dust by John Oxenham
- Question mark remarks by Mark Miller
- Владимир Британишский – В нашем вновь обретенном ленинградском доме
- Online Lover by Rainbow Reed
- Astrophel and Stella: XX by Sir Philip Sidney
- Robert Burns: My Heart’s In The Highlands:
- Николай Заболоцкий – Меркнут знаки зодиака
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
- For K. J., Leaving and Coming Back by Marilyn Hacker
- Exiles by Marilyn Hacker
- Desesperanto by Marilyn Hacker
- Dear Alzheimer’s by Maria Knox
- Colors Passing Through Us by Marge Piercy
- Children of My Own by Marie Starr
- Belly Good by Marge Piercy
- Baseball and Writing by Marianne Moore
- Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy
- Attack of the Squash People by Marge Piercy
- Always Unsuitable by Marge Piercy
- about emptiness… by Marina Cecilia Kohon
- A Work Of Artifice by Marge Piercy
- A Grave by Marianne Moore
- Woman by Manmohan Acharya
- Without exile, who am I? by Mahmoud Darwish
- Winter’s End by Mac McGovern
- Wind by Mac McGovern
- What these girl means to me by Maphoto selokela
- Two Stranger Birds in Our Feathers by Mahmoud Darwish
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
Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) was an Australian poet and essayist known for his satirical slant. He was also a critic, teacher and academic.