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:
- The Sound Of Music -a Ghazal by Umamaheswari Anandane
- Intrigued with Evening by Jelaluddin Rumi
- Compensation by Rabindranath Tagore
- Always Unsuitable by Marge Piercy
- Владимир Маяковский – Польша
- Epistle to James Smith by Robert Burns
- Never Give All The Heart by William Butler Yeats
- Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness poem – Alexander Pope
- Astrophel and Stella VII: WhenNature Made her Chief Work by Sir Philip Sidney
- Epigram : To Leonora Singing At Rome (Translated From Milton) by William Cowper
- Ольга Берггольц – Не может быть, чтоб жили мы напрасно
- Lonely Burial by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Control by Sidney Lanier
- An Image From A Past Life by William Butler Yeats
- Plague Of Dead Sharks
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
- Стефан Малларме – Подавленное тучей
- Стефан Малларме – Отходит кружево опять
- Стефан Малларме – О, зеркало
- Стефан Малларме – Милостыня
- Стефан Малларме – Гробница Эдгара По
- Стефан Малларме – Ее ногтей ожив, что ожил из пароса
- Стефан Малларме – Дар поэмы
- Станислав Востоков – Стой, кто идёт
- Станислав Востоков – Не хочется отцу и маме
- Станислав Востоков – Не умею
- Спиридон Дрожжин – Я для песни задушевной
- Спиридон Дрожжин – В деревне
- Спиридон Дрожжин – Свети мне, солнышко
- Спиридон Дрожжин – Смерть коня-пахаря
- Спиридон Дрожжин – Рожь
- Спиридон Дрожжин – Песня пахаря
- Спиридон Дрожжин – Первая борозда
- Спиридон Дрожжин – Люблю я сельский мой приют
- Спиридон Дрожжин – Из поэмы “Дуняша”
- София Парнок – В земле бесплодной не взойти зерну
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