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:
- Cyprian, in my dream by Sappho
- In Memory of W. B. Yeats by W. H. Auden
- Australia
- Indignation Of A High-Minded Spaniard by William Wordsworth
- Writing to Onegin by Ruth Padel
- A Week by Thomas Hardy
- An Eare-Stringe by William Strode
- Risus Dei by Thomas Edward Brown
- Олег Григорьев – Вкусно от меда во рте
- Sonnet 5: Those hours, that with gentle work did frame by William Shakespeare
- The Moment I knew my Life had Changed by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
- Elegy Written At Hotwells, Bristol by William Lisle Bowles
- Fairy Tale by Robert Desnos
- Ludwig Von Beethoven’s Return To Vienna by Rita Dove
- The Eagle 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
- Dumb poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Dionysus poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Colophon poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Boo to Buddha poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Ave Adonai poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Au Bal poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Athor and Asar poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- At Sea poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- At Bordj-an-Nus poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Arhan poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- An Oath poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Adela poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Tiger
- The School of Night
- The Return of Persephone
- The Pleasure of Princes
- The Gateway
- The Commination
- Standardization
- Phallus
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.