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:
- Reconciliation by William Butler Yeats
- Composed on The Eve Of The Marriage Of A Friend In The Vale Of Grasmere by William Wordsworth
- Epigramma in Duos montes Amosclivum Et Bilboreum poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- Fiesta Melons by Sylvia Plath
- Владимир Высоцкий – Жил-был человек, который очень много видел
- The Routine Things Around The House by Stephen Dunn
- Euclid by Vachel Lindsay
- Dear Alzheimer’s by Maria Knox
- Ольга Ермолаева – Ты где летал, мой падающий с Фанских гор
- Southern Song by Margaret Walker
- A Wandering Knight by Rixa White
- I Am There by Mahmoud Darwish
- MANY NAMESAKES by Satish Verma
- Memorials of A Tour In Scotland, 1803 I. Departure From The Vale Of Grasmere, August 1803 by William Wordsworth
- Иван Бунин – Ночлег
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
- Woken Up By Beautiful Dreams
- The Poet Angels Who Came To Dinner
- The Nomad039s Vision Ode To A Skylark Dressed In Black
- The Man That Poetry Made
- Power Of Thought
- Once Was A Singer For God Remembering Nekia
- My Aroma
- Lost Love Is Never Lost
- Holiday Letter For A Poet Gone To War
- Gratitudes Of A Dozen Roses
- Every Hour Henceforth
- Cell Mate
- Calling The Spirits
- Angel Of Christmas Love Shining Bright
- Angel Of Better Days To Come
- All Night In Savannah The Wind Wrote Poetry
- The Solitary Oak On Mount Kremlin Bicetre
- The Prison Of The Past
- The Dead Woman
- Pathos Is The Skyward Tanka
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.