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:
- Medallion by Sylvia Plath
- Wishes by Satish Verma
- Джон Китс – Чаттертону
- To Byron poem – John Keats poems
- Sonnet. To A Lady Seen For A Few Moments At Vauxhall poem – John Keats poems
- Жан де Лафонтен – Человек и его Изображение
- On a Prospect of T’ai-shan by Tu Fu
- Paradise Lost: Book 06 poem – John Milton poems
- Off Mesolongi poem – Alfred Austin
- Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Низами Гянджеви – Другим знавала ты меня
- The Dawn
- The Easter Egg Hunt by Roger Turner
- Arms And The Boy by Wilfred Owen
- Oblivion by Satish Verma
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
- Even if I don’t hear your voice, I know by Vinko Kalinic
- Don’t know the answer by Vinko Kalinic
- Dog’s love by Vinko Kalinić
- Dear Traffic Signal by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa
- Confessions of a Software Engineer by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa
- Black song about a black woman and red wine by Vinko Kalinić
- Birthday party blunder by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa
- Beautiful Stranger by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa
- Ballad about a stinking flower by Vinko Kalinic
- Altar amid the sea by Vinko Kalinic
- Aeneid by Virgil
- Eclogue VIII by Virgil
- Eclogue VI by Virgil
- Eclogue IV by Virgil
- Eclogue III by Virgil
- Eclogue V by Virgil
- Ecologue IX by Virgil
- Ecologue I by Virgil
- Eclogue X by Virgil
- You by Vladimir Mayakovsky
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.