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:
- O aye my wife she dang me (Song) by Robert Burns
- Contusion by Sylvia Plath
- Apollo the great by Neelam Shah
- Валерий Брюсов – Il bacio
- Владимир Набоков – Есть в одиночестве свобода
- Song. Murdering Beauty by Thomas Carew
- Алексей Толстой – Стасюлевич и Маркевич
- Strange Fruit by Seamus Heaney
- Sonnet. Written In Answer To A Sonnet By J. H. Reynolds poem – John Keats poems
- If Only by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Владимир Маяковский – Строители коммуны (РОСТА)
- Владимир Высоцкий – Песня Вани перед студентами
- Monologue At 3 AM by Sylvia Plath
- The Passing of Stumpy Shore by Mervyn John Webster
- Ode For Ted by Sylvia Plath
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
- Владимир Маяковский – Два опиума
- Владимир Маяковский – Два не совсем обычных случая
- Владимир Маяковский – Два гренадера и один адмирал
- Владимир Маяковский – Два Берлина
- Владимир Маяковский – Дурацкий сон (РОСТА №234)
- Владимир Маяковский – Думай об армии (РОСТА №873)
- Владимир Маяковский – Дожмем! В России буржуазия побеждена… (РОСТА №841)
- Владимир Маяковский – Донецкий шахтер голодает… (РОСТА №619)
- Владимир Маяковский – Домой
- Владимир Маяковский – Дом Герцена
- Владимир Маяковский – Долой волокиту! Да здравствует революционная инициатива! (РОСТА № 493 )
- Владимир Маяковский – Долой мешечников (РОСТА №525)
- Владимир Маяковский – Долг Украине
- Владимир Маяковский – Добьем! (РОСТА №745)
- Владимир Маяковский – Для Донбасса формируется поезд с подарками (РОСТА №938)
- Владимир Маяковский – Для чего оттягивают паны мириться?.. (РОСТА №264)
- Владимир Маяковский – Детский театр из собственной квартирки
- Владимир Маяковский – Дешевая распродажа
- Владимир Маяковский – День в маевочку мою… (Главполитпросвет №151)
- Владимир Маяковский – Дело красноармейцев драться… (РОСТА №336)
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.