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:
- Mother Earth; Her Beauty And Her Destruction by TMBedell
- Before, Behind, And Beyond poem – Alfred Austin
- Orion
- Ольга Берггольц – Моя медаль
- Николай Гумилев – Кармен худа, коричневатый
- How…? by Nizar Sartawi
- Psalm 08 poem – John Milton poems
- Aftermath by Siegfried Sassoon
- Bathing In The River
- A Border Burn poem – Alfred Austin
- Владимир Маяковский – Заносы не дают железным дорогам жить… (РОСТА №838)
- Ox Tamer, The. by Walt Whitman
- Paragraphs from a Day-Book by Marilyn Hacker
- Владимир Маяковский – Привет, КИМ
- Толстой Алексей Николаевич стихи: Читать стихотворения Алексея Толстого – Список произведений, стихов поэта на Poetry Monster
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
- Олег Сердобольский – Играли в шахматы слоны
- Олег Сердобольский – Футболист
- Олег Сердобольский – Два кораблика
- Олег Сердобольский – Черная считалка
- Олег Сердобольский – Алмазная снежинка
- Олег Митяев – Француженка
- Олег Мехов – Ах, у нашего Антошки
- Олег Карелин – Фото
- Олег Григорьев – Жена торговала колбасой
- Олег Григорьев – Зажав кузнечика в руке
- Олег Григорьев – Зашли мы к Сизову с приятелем
- Олег Григорьев – Яма
- Олег Григорьев – Я взял бумагу и перо
- Олег Григорьев – Я спросил электрика Петрова
- Олег Григорьев – Я сам себя в пальто одел
- Олег Григорьев – Я дверь в коридор отворил
- Олег Григорьев – Вперед не рвись
- Олег Григорьев – Вкусно от меда во рте
- Олег Григорьев – Вечером девочка Мила
- Олег Григорьев – Увязался М. за Ж.
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.