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:
- Robert Burns: Young Jockie Was The Blythest Lad:
- Владимир Маяковский – Для чего оттягивают паны мириться?.. (РОСТА №264)
- Canto XLIX poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Our Fathers Also by Rudyard Kipling
- Take My Hands
- Composed By The Sea-Side, Near Calais, August 1802 by William Wordsworth
- Ок Мельникова – Заповедь номер одиннадцать
- Robert Burns: To John Kennedy, Dumfries House:
- Who by Sylvia Plath
- Владимир Маяковский – Вот молочный налог… (Главполитпросвет №217)
- Валерий Брюсов – Последнее желанье
- gratitudes_of_a_dozen_roses.html
- Ghosts by Martina Reisz Newberry
- Sonnet VII. To Solitude poem – John Keats poems
- Summon Me by Walid Saba
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
- Robinson by Weldon Kees
- The End Of The Library by Weldon Kees
- Late Evening Song by Weldon Kees
- La Vita Nuova by Weldon Kees
- Interregnum by Weldon Kees
- Dead March by Weldon Kees
- Covering Two Years by Weldon Kees
- Colloquy by Weldon Kees
- A Pastiche For Eve by Weldon Kees
- A Musician’s Wife by Weldon Kees
- 1926 by Weldon Kees
- Woods by Wendell Berry
- What We Need Is Here by Wendell Berry
- Water by Wendell Berry
- The Wish to be Generous by Wendell Berry
- The Silence by Wendell Berry
- The Real Work by Wendell Berry
- The peace of wild things by Wendell Berry
- The Man Born to Farming by Wendell Berry
- The Lilies by Wendell Berry
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.