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:
- Synesthesia by Orla McGreevy
- Sonnet 30: When to the sessions of sweet silent thought by William Shakespeare
- Robert Burns: Epistle To Davie, A Brother Poet:
- The Discovery of the Kama Sutra by Raj Arumugam
- The Years by Sara Teasdale
- Now Close the Windows by Robert Frost
- Lord Nevil039s Advice
- Has Your Soul Sipped? by Wilfred Owen
- The Manor Garden by Sylvia Plath
- Seal
- Robert Burns: My Lord A-Hunting:
- Владимир Корнилов – Флейта в метро
- Олег Бундур – Копуша
- Sparkles from The Wheel. by Walt Whitman
- Less Than The Cloud To The Wind by Sara Teasdale
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
- Atalanta’s Race by William Morris
- A Good Knight In Prison by William Morris
- A Death Song by William Morris
- We embraced and talked about rains by Vinko Kalinic
- Twins by Vinko Kalinić
- To a friend by Vinko Kalinić
- Those seven days by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa
- The face wanted by Vinko Kalinić
- The Boy by Vinko Kalinić
- Summer We Called Home by Vinita Agrawal
- Story of a Drunk by Violet Uram
- Sometimes by Vinko Kalinić
- See, how I love you by Vinko Kalinić
- Sea God and the wind rose by Vinko Kalinić
- Respect her by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa
- Requiem for Two by Vinko Kalinić
- Raw Silk by Vinita Agrawal
- Raise the head, child by Vinko Kalinić
- Pure call of the wilderness by Vinko Kalinic
- Pigeon Haiku by Violet Uram
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.