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:
- Владимир Высоцкий – Вот Вы докатились до сороковых
- Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot poem – Alexander Pope
- Sadness and Joy by William Henry Davies
- Robert Burns: Deluded Swain, The Pleasure:
- Auld Maitland poem – Andrew Lang poems
- In This Cul De Sac
- Иван Демьянов – Парикмахер рак-омар
- Владимир Высоцкий – Наброски песен к несостоявшемуся спектаклю по сказкам Шергина
- Robert Burns: Bannocks O’ Bear Meal:
- Владимир Гиппиус – Друг, скажу тебе несказанное
- Геннадий Айги – ДЕВОЧКА В ДЕТСТВЕ
- Monologue At 3 AM by Sylvia Plath
- Memoriam
- Dyer Died In Silence poem – Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson poems | Poems and Poetry
- Джон Донн – Ворожба над портретом
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
- Will Remain Unseen by Vasil Slavov
- Vietnam Vet befriends an immigrant in Pittsburgh, Pa – ( let’s put it that way ) by Vasil Slavov
- To Somebody Out There by Vashti Trisawati Abhidana
- The Blessed Birth by Vasishta Sharma Gudi
- Sweet Colonnade by Vasil Slavov
- Shadow Of Liberty by Vattacharja Chandan
- Sea of lavender ( 4 pre-summer poems ) by Vasil Slavov
- No LOVE by venkatesh.valusa
- My life – “An ambiguous journey” by Vasishta Sharma Gudi
- Let Me Tide Over by Vattacharja Chandan
- Kite by Vattacharja Chandan
- Immortal Indian Legend by Vasishta Sharma Gudi
- Had Something To Say by Vattacharja Chandan
- Deity of my dreams by Vasishta Sharma Gudi
- Confession by Vasishta Sharma Gudi
- Bulgarian Lullaby by Vasil Slavov
- At the bottom by Vasil Slavov
- Wife Killer by Vernon Scannell
- Where Shall We Go? by Vernon Scannell
- Walking Wounded by Vernon Scannell
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.