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:
- Valentine In Form Of Ballade poem – Andrew Lang poems
- By The Fates poem – Alfred Austin
- Владимир Костров – Поток ушедших лет
- Against A Sickness To The Female Double Principle God
- The Gardener XLVI: You Left Me by Rabindranath Tagore
- black_morning_lovesong.html
- The End of the Argument by Martina Reisz Newberry
- Parabola
- Camp Followers Song Gomal River
- No, Love Is Not Dead by Robert Desnos
- Love Sonnet XXV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Вера Павлова – По счету
- Lighting one candle by Yosa Buson
- Федор Сологуб – Всё зеленее и светлее
- Today’s News by Ted Berrigan
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
- Innocence
- In The Stone I Rooted
- In Between The Strophes
- Human Joys
- Human Charms
- He Who Creates Re Creates Himself
- Hai Kou Unpublished
- Hai Kou
- Greek Light
- Greece
- Golden Eangle
- Gesture Theory A Villanelle
- Gem Immortality
- Fruit Leaf Roots Flowers
- First Verse
- First Light
- Excerpt From The Gertrude Stein Collaborative Series
- Eudaemonism In A Senryu Novel
- Drunkenness
- Do Not Get Angry
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.