A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000)
by Alec Derwent Hope
For every bird there is this last migration;
Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;
With a warm passage to the summer station
Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.
Year after year a speck on the map, divided
By a whole hemisphere, summons her to come;
Season after season, sure and safely guided,
Going away she is also coming home.
And being home, memory becomes a passion
With which she feeds her brood and straws her nest,
Aware of ghosts that haunt the heart’s possession
And exiled love mourning within the breast.
The sands are green with a mirage of valleys;
The palm tree casts a shadow not its own;
Down the long architrave of temple or palace
Blows a cool air from moorland scarps of stone.
And day by day the whisper of love grows stronger;
That delicate voice, more urgent with despair,
Custom and fear constraining her no longer,
Drives her at last on the waste leagues of air.
A vanishing speck in those inane dominions,
Single and frail, uncertain of her place,
Alone in the bright host of her companions,
Lost in the blue unfriendliness of space.
She feels it close now, the appointed season;
The invisible thread is broken as she flies;
Suddenly, without warning, without reason,
The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies.
Try as she will, the trackless world delivers
No way, the wilderness of light no sign;
Immense,complex contours of hills and rivers
Mock her small wisdom with their vast design.
The darkness rises from the eastern valleys,
And the winds buffet her with their hungry breath,
And the great earth, with neither grief nor malice,
Receives the tiny burden of her death.
A few random poems:
- Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (Part I) poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Aux Imagistes by William Carlos Williams
- Traveling Through The Dark by William Stafford
- Николай Языков – А. Н. Вульфу (Теперь я в Камби, милый мой)
- Нина Гаген-Торн – Барак ночью
- Омар Хайям – Бог есть, и всё есть Бог
- Breather by Vishü Rita Krocha
- Literary Cubism – A Non-Structured Structure For Twenty-first Century Storytelling
- Владимир Маяковский – Старый мотив (РОСТА №137)
- Владимир Высоцкий – Мы вращаем Землю
- Алексей Жемчужников – Отголосок девятой симфонии Бетховена
- Neither Out Far Nor In Deep by Robert Frost
- Medallion by Sylvia Plath
- Lines Written As A School Exercise At Hawkshead, Anno Aetatis 14 by William Wordsworth
- Омар Хайям – Мы влюбчивая голь, здесь нету мусульман
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
- Without You by Miraj Patel
- Wild Soul by Michael Yuan
- Why Me? by Michael Yuan
- Why Do All Good Things Come To An End? by Michael Yuan
- Urban Caterpillar by Minal Sarosh
- Umbrella by Mike Yuan
- To A Sad Daughter by Michael Ondaatje
- There Can Never Be Another You by Miraj Patel
- Their Reposessions by Michael P Amram
- The Wild Goose’s Will by Mike Yuan
- The Tree and the Marble by Mike Yuan
- The Time Around Scars by Michael Ondaatje
- The Only One I Can’t Live Without, Its You by Miraj Patel
- The Only One I Can’t Live Without, Its You by Miraj Patel
- The Natural History of Elephants by Milton Acorn
- The lords above by Michael Nikoletseas
- The Lonely Climber: A Seed Poem by Mike Yuan
- The King by Michael Yuan
- The Island by Milton Acorn
- The Fraser River by Mike Yuan
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.