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:
- Tube Station
- Юнна Мориц – Не вспоминай меня
- Suttee by Sarojini Naidu
- Валерий Брюсов – К.А. Коровину (Душа твоя, быть может, ослепительней)
- Lyonesse
- Love Poem to My Husband of Thirty-one Years by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
- Низами Гянджеви – Коль мы на весах любви
- Яков Полонский – Песня циганки
- Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath
- Юлия Друнина – Есть праздники, что навсегда с тобой
- Владимир Набоков – Пускай все горестней и глуше
- Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days by Ted Hughes
- Николай Гумилев – Норвежские горы
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Чёрный цвет
- Аля Кудряшева – Пой мне еще, что я могу изменить
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
- Playing With Big Numbers
- Percy Janes Boarding The Bus
- One Word
- Once She Dreamed
- O God
- Notebook Of A Return To The Native Land
- Night Words
- Negligence
- Mustard Flowers
- Meditation With Feet
- Love
- Little Talk
- Light The Festive Candles
- Levitation
- Labor Pains
- Labels
- Kalli
- Insect039s Nest
- In This Cul De Sac
- I See Chile In My Rearview Mirror
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.