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:
- A New Year Greeting by W H Auden
- The Music Of The Rains – English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Леля
- In Praise of Laziness by William Wycherley
- The Second Voyage by Rudyard Kipling
- Ballade of Dead Actors by William Ernest Henley
- The Danish Boy by William Wordsworth
- Mortal Words by Robert McNamara
- Only Iraq by Mahmoud Darwish
- Man was made to Mourn: A Dirge by Robert Burns
- Muhammad by Mahmoud Darwish
- Noah by Siegfried Sassoon
- “Here have I learnt the little that I know” poem – Alfred Austin
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Радуга
- Юлия Друнина – Бережем тех, кого любим
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
- Autumn Leaves by Thomas J Camp
- You by Thonda Sri Indrani
- You Will Forget! by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- Written at Stonehenge by Thomas Warton
- Words Of Love Forevermore by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- Why? by Tiffany Ann Monroe
- While Summer Suns O’er the Gay Prospect Play’d by Thomas Warton
- What Is Woman But A Song! by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- We are Africa by Timileyin Gabriel Olajuwon
- Virgule by Thomas Lux
- Verses on Sir Joshua Reynold’s Painted Window at New College, Oxford by Thomas Warton
- Vagueness Petrified by Thonda Sri Indrani
- Unlike, For Example, The Sound Of A Riptooth Saw by Thomas Lux
- Town Planning Agencies by Tilottama Chatterjee
- Torn Shades by Thomas Lux
- The Road That Runs Beside The River by Thomas Lux
- The Pulling Away by Timothy Cole
- The Pleasures of Melancholy by Thomas Warton
- The Man Into Whose Yard You Should Not Hit Your Ball by Thomas Lux
- The Mocking Bird by Timothy Thomas Fortune
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.