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:
- Satisfaction of my eyes poem – Andrew Vassell poems | Poems and Poetry
- To The Lord Falkland
- Эмиль Верхарн – Вот лампа зажжена
- John Kinsella’s Lament For Mrs. Mary Moore by William Butler Yeats
- Ad Nepotem by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Robert Burns: Sonnet Written On The Author’s Birthday, : On hearing a Thrush sing in his Morning Walk.
- Song, by a Person of Quality poem – Alexander Pope
- Bridal Song by William Shakespeare
- A Farewell poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Вера Павлова – Всходить на костёр Жанною
- Владимир Маяковский – Польша
- At Sea
- Inscription For A Hermitage In The Author’s Garden by William Cowper
- St. Alphonsus Rodriguez poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Владимир Высоцкий – Вот раньше жизнь
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
- Snapshots Of A Daughter In Law
- Shattered Head
- Rural Reflections
- Prospective Immigrants Please Note
- Power
- Planetarium
- Paula Becker To Clara Westhoff
- Our Whole Life
- Orion
- On Edges
- November 1968
- My Mouth Hovers Across Your Breasts
- Moving In Winter
- Miracle Ice Cream
- Living In Sin
- Integrity
- In Those Years
- In The Evening
- In A Classroom
- Implosions
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.