dear bhikkhu: a eulogy
by Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé
what will you will to endure, bhikkhu?
what will you remember, twenty lake days
saffron robe to keep out the cold, keep out the stares
keep off the wax moths and blinding light?
watering hole no lodging, jeta’s grove like amber
did it too keep out the cold, keep out the stares
keep at bay the thronging, night winds and downing sun?
head above water, swimming internal sounds
what feeling, of quiet acceptance and hope?
morsel against the drowning, the hungering
the putting up, creeping creatureliness that doubts
fetter of views behind the banyan trees
what conveniences after that?
a nice long bath, then their soft rice and milk?
did the sintered glass beads hurl themselves upstream
like tiny grayling, as you would have liked?
which headlong direction, gulp and dip?
did the two fishermen reel you in and upward
gold-leafed statue in another bluing river
thousand miles away, east of thousand faces later?
what blessings surface?
what trouble you go to, to care for the dying
that, glad at heart, other bhikkhus
may too remember the rescue, this refraction
Solstice Literary Magazine
Copyright ©:
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé

A few random poems:
- The Nympholept
- To Joanna by William Wordsworth
- Sonnet 42: That thou hast her, it is not all my grief by William Shakespeare
- Everlasting Wander by Rixa White
- Entering the Body by Michelle Bonczek Evory
- Isabella or The Pot of Basil poem – John Keats poems
- from In Time of War by W H Auden
- Over The Hill From The Poor-House by Will McKendree Carleton
- Languaculture by Mike Yuan
- Sonnet 52: So am I as the rich whose blessèd key by William Shakespeare
- Владимир Британишский – Смерть Крылова
- The Prayer of Miriam Cohen by Rudyard Kipling
- The Death Bed by Thomas Hood
- Владимир Высоцкий – Парня спасём, парня в детдом
- Николай Гумилев – Заклинание
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
- the-infernal-regions.html
- honeycomb.html
- Dark Matter by Aaron Baker
- polyphony_in_a_cathedral.html
- one_almost_might.html
- nursery_rhyme_for_a_twenty_first_birthday.html
- Not Love Perhaps
- night_piece.html
- never.html
- music.html
- meeting.html
- last_word_to_childhood.html
- june_sick_room.html
- houses.html
- flight_of_stairs.html
- epitaph_on_a_disturber_of_his_times.html
- Epitaph for Our Children
- empty_room.html
- earthfast.html
- don_juan.html
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