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:
- Николай Некрасов – Вчера, сегодня
- Chronicles by Mark Olynyk
- Джон Китс – Что ж, по горам и по долам
- Ghazal 314 by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- My mother was telling me by Vinko Kalinic
- A Deep Sworn Vow by William Butler Yeats
- Владимир Маяковский – Враги хлеба
- Robert Burns: Up In The Morning Early:
- Single Traveller by P. K. Page
- O You by Satish Verma
- Cake by Roger McGough
- Sonnet 127: In the old age black was not counted fair by William Shakespeare
- Владимир Маяковский – Третий вывоз
- The Deep-Sea Cables by Rudyard Kipling
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
- When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d. by Walt Whitman
- When I read the Book. by Walt Whitman
- When I peruse the Conquer’d Fame. by Walt Whitman
- When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer. by Walt Whitman
- When I heard at the Close of the Day. by Walt Whitman
- What think You I take my Pen in Hand? by Walt Whitman
- What Place is Besieged? by Walt Whitman
- What General has a Good Army. by Walt Whitman
- What Best I See In Thee. by Walt Whitman
- What am I, After All? by Walt Whitman
- We Two—How Long We were Fool’d. by Walt Whitman
- We Two Boys Together Clinging. by Walt Whitman
- Visor’d. by Walt Whitman
- Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field. by Walt Whitman
- Turn, O Libertad. by Walt Whitman
- To You. by Walt Whitman
- To Thee, Old Cause! by Walt Whitman
- To the Garden the World. by Walt Whitman
- To One Shortly to Die. by Walt Whitman
- To Him that was Crucified. by Walt Whitman
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.