by Ai
We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don’t tell me, I say. I don’t want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life
is a chain of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,
and beginning to rise heavenward
in their confirmation dresses,
like white helium balloons,
the wreathes of flowers on their heads spinning,
and above all that,
that’s where I’m floating,
and that’s what it’s like
only ten times clearer,
ten times more horrible.
Could anyone alive survive it?

A few random poems:
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Распутие
- Deftly, Admiral, Cast Your Fly by W H Auden
- Before the Altar poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- A General Summary by Rudyard Kipling
- The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling
- Hope Holds to Christ poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- MY BEST PAL by Steve Troyanovich
- last words to the moon by Raj Arumugam
- Низами Гянджеви – Слышишь, звякнул бубенцами
- Алексей Толстой – Ушкуйник
- The Jewel Stairs’ Grievance poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Владимир Гиппиус – Узел
- Владимир Корнилов – Останкинская башня
- Олег Бундур – Время со Светой
- Алексей Толстой – В колокол, мирно дремавший, с налета тяжелая бомба
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 Riddle Song. by Walt Whitman
- A Song. by Walt Whitman
- A Glimpse. by Walt Whitman
- An Old Man’s Thought of School. by Walt Whitman
- Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman
- Perfections. by Walt Whitman
- Pensive on Her Dead Gazing, I Heard the Mother of All. by Walt Whitman
- Pensive and Faltering. by Walt Whitman
- Pensive and Faltering. by Walt Whitman
- Patroling Barnegat. by Walt Whitman
- Passage to India. by Walt Whitman
- Ox Tamer, The. by Walt Whitman
- Over the Carnage. by Walt Whitman
- Out of the Rolling Ocean, the Crowd. by Walt Whitman
- Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking. by Walt Whitman
- Out from Behind this Mask. by Walt Whitman
- Others may Praise what They Like. by Walt Whitman
- Or from that Sea of Time. by Walt Whitman
- One Sweeps By. by Walt Whitman
- One Song, America, Before I Go. by Walt Whitman
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