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:
- Easter Hymn
 - Алишер Навои – Словно зеркало, сияет лик твой
 - Иван Варавва – Жаворонок
 - Владимир Маяковский – Обряды кому и на кой ляд целовальный обряд
 - Lines to Mr. John Kennedy by Robert Burns
 - Вера Павлова – за руку здороваться с рекой
 - Владимир Британишский – Отечественные записки 1840-х годов
 - Владимир Британишский – Дождик
 - I Can’t Touch The Sun by Shel Silverstein
 - Владимир Костров – Смуту и безверье не приемль
 - Sonnet 42: That thou hast her, it is not all my grief by William Shakespeare
 - Sonnet 104: To me, fair friend, you never can be old by William Shakespeare
 - Robert Burns: The Bonie Wee Thing:
 - A Descriptive Poem on the Silvery Tay by William Topaz McGonagall
 - To Virgil poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
 
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
- Юнна Мориц – Зейдер-Зее
 - Юнна Мориц – За невлюбленными людьми
 - Юнна Мориц – Ёжик резиновый
 - Юнна Мориц – Хорошо быть молодым
 - Юнна Мориц – Вместо сноски
 - Юнна Мориц – Веселый завтрак
 - Юнна Мориц – Вечерний свет
 - Юнна Мориц – В серебряном столбе
 - Юнна Мориц – В цирке
 - Юнна Мориц – Трудно светиться и петь не легко
 - Юнна Мориц – Свежий бублик
 - Юнна Мориц – Страна вагонная, вагонное терпенье
 - Юнна Мориц – Собственное небо
 - Юнна Мориц – Снег в ноябре
 - Юнна Мориц – Смелый гусь
 - Юнна Мориц – Сказка про песенку
 - Юнна Мориц – Ручеек
 - Юнна Мориц – Разноцветные котята
 - Юнна Мориц – Приход вдохновения
 - Юнна Мориц – Попрыгать-поиграть
 
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.