Flight Of Stairs
by A. S. J. Tessimond
Stairs fly as straight as hawks;
Or else in spirals, curve out of curve, pausing
At a ledge to poise their wings before relaunching.
Stairs sway at the height of their flight
Like a melody in Tristan;
Or swoop to the ground with glad spread of their feathers
Before they close them.
They curiously investigate
The shells of buildings,
A hollow core,
Shell in a shell.
Useless to produce their path to infinity
Or turn it to a moral symbol,
For their flight is ambiguous, upwards or downwards as you please;
Their fountain is frozen,
Their concertina is silent.

A few random poems:
- Ольга Ермолаева – Будет весь день долбить
- O God
- Владимир Маяковский – Строители коммуны (РОСТА)
- Everything by Philip Levine
- Владимир Маяковский – Дядя ЭМЭСПЭО
- The Gardener LV: It Was Mid-Day by Rabindranath Tagore
- Джон Китс – Чаттертону
- Ольга Берггольц – Лучший город
- Яков Полонский – Памяти В. М. Гаршина
- Аля Кудряшева – Я тут недавно встретила свое прошлое
- Every day I bear a burden by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- A Man Young And Old: II. Human Dignity by William Butler Yeats
- The Call of the Crows by Tanmoy
- Robert Burns: Epigram To Miss Jean Scott:
- Стефан Малларме – Устав от горького бездействия и лени
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
- For K. J., Leaving and Coming Back by Marilyn Hacker
- Exiles by Marilyn Hacker
- Desesperanto by Marilyn Hacker
- Dear Alzheimer’s by Maria Knox
- Colors Passing Through Us by Marge Piercy
- Children of My Own by Marie Starr
- Belly Good by Marge Piercy
- Baseball and Writing by Marianne Moore
- Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy
- Attack of the Squash People by Marge Piercy
- Always Unsuitable by Marge Piercy
- about emptiness… by Marina Cecilia Kohon
- A Work Of Artifice by Marge Piercy
- A Grave by Marianne Moore
- Woman by Manmohan Acharya
- Without exile, who am I? by Mahmoud Darwish
- Winter’s End by Mac McGovern
- Wind by Mac McGovern
- What these girl means to me by Maphoto selokela
- Two Stranger Birds in Our Feathers by Mahmoud Darwish
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