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:
- The Beggars by Sylvia Plath
- A Jog-Trot Pair by Thomas Hardy
- Ольга Седакова – Луг, юго-западный ветер
- His Last Request to Julia by Robert Herrick
- In a Vale by Robert Frost
- God Cut the Cord by Raj Napal
- Ольга Берггольц – Триптих 1949 года
- Robert Burns: Phillis The Fair:
- Robert Burns: Man Was Made To Mourn: A Dirge:
- Hymn of the City by William Cullen Bryant
- Robert Burns: On Politics:
- Any Lifetime by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- A London Plane-Tree poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- For P’ei Ti by Wang Wei
- gum tree loved by the sky by Raj Arumugam
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 Бундур – Я несу домой морошку
- Олег Бундур – Я не плачу
- Олег Бундур – Я болею
- Олег Бундур – Хорошее слово
- Олег Бундур – Всё живёт
- Олег Бундур – Время со Светой
- Олег Бундур – Вращения
- Олег Бундур – Вовка дразнит Свету
- Олег Бундур – Вопросы
- Олег Бундур – Вместо нас
- Олег Бундур – Вид с задней парты
- Олег Бундур – Весна
- Олег Бундур – Вечером
- Олег Бундур – В зоологическом музее
- Олег Бундур – В саду
- Олег Бундур – В огороде
- Олег Бундур – В гостях на великом
- Олег Бундур – В глухом лесу
- Олег Бундур – Ужин
- Олег Бундур – Утром
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.