A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)
If I’ve reached for your lines (I have)
like letters from the dead that stir the nerves
dowsed you for a springhead
to water my thirst
dug into my compost skeletons and petals
you surely meant to catch the light:
-at work in my wormeaten wormwood-raftered
stateless underground
have I a plea?
If I’ve touched your finger
with a ravenous tongue
licked from your palm a rift of salt
if I’ve dreamt or thought you
a pack of blood fresh-drawn
hanging darkred from a hook
higher than my heart
(you who understand transfusion)
where else should I appeal?
A pilot light lies low
while the gas jets sleep
(a cat getting toed from stove
into nocturnal ice)
language uncommon and agile as truth
melts down the most intractable silence
A lighthouse keeper’s ethics:
you tend for all or none
for this you might set your furniture on fire
A this we have blundered over
as if the lamp could be shut off at will
rescue denied for some
and still a lighthouse be

A few random poems:
- Crazy Jane On The Day Of Judgment by William Butler Yeats
- On Passing The New Menin Gate by Siegfried Sassoon
- The Laws of God, The Laws of Man poem – A. E. Housman
- Edmundi Trotii Epitaphium poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- To John Hamilton Reynolds poem – John Keats poems
- Blind by Siegfried Sassoon
- You must once
- Old Man poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Giving Myself Up by Mark Strand
- Sonnet To Spenser poem – John Keats poems
- Premature Blindness by Winston Riley
- Book Thirteenth [Imagination And Taste, How Impaired And Restored Concluded] by William Wordsworth
- Longing by Sara Teasdale
- Gehazi by Rudyard Kipling
- Lament For The Makers By William Dunbar
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
- He, who was born poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- Halls grew darker poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- Gamajun, the Prophetic Bird poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- Don’t fear death poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- A Girl Sang a Song poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- A Girl Was Singing In A Church Choir poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- The Wizard Way poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Twins poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Titanic poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Tent poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Rose and the Cross poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Quest poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Priestess of Panormita poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Pentagram poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Neophyte poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Mantra-Yoga poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Interpreter poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Hermit poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Hawk and the Babe poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Garden of Janus poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
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
Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012) was an American poet, essayist, and feminist.