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:
- Passion by Sera Jacob
- Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower by Taha Muhammad Ali
- Витамины
- Arabian Night’s Entertainments by William Ernest Henley
- Song—Fragment—Leezie Lindsay by Robert Burns
- Владимир Высоцкий – Неужто здесь сошёлся клином свет
- Владимир Корнилов – Сызнова
- Nami Danam… poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Thing of Beauty (Endymion) poem – John Keats poems
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Когда бы
- Until You’ve Found Pain by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Gyrations by Satish Verma
- Robert Burns: The Lad They Ca’Jumpin John:
- A Letter From Italy poem – Alfred Austin
- When I Watch the Living Meet poem – Alfred Edward Housman
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
- To Foreign Lands. by Walt Whitman
- To a Western Boy. by Walt Whitman
- To a Pupil. by Walt Whitman
- To a President. by Walt Whitman
- To a Locomotive in Winter. by Walt Whitman
- To a Historian. by Walt Whitman
- To a foil’d European Revolutionaire. by Walt Whitman
- To a Common Prostitute. by Walt Whitman
- To a Certain Civilian. by Walt Whitman
- To a Certain Cantatrice. by Walt Whitman
- Thoughts. by Walt Whitman
- Thoughts. by Walt Whitman
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Thou Reader. by Walt Whitman
- Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling. 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.