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:
- Pity by Sara Teasdale
- What time are we living in by T. Wignesan
- Black song about a black woman and red wine by Vinko Kalinić
- Василий Тредиаковский – Мое сердце все было в страсти
- Lover’s Gifts XXVIII: I Dreamt by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Breeze at Dawn by Jelaluddin Rumi
- I’ve Lived To See Desire Vanish poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Licorice Fields at Pontefract poem – John Betjeman poems
- Mother by Sachin Yadav (Pen Name: Rahul Nachhiketa)
- I Know an Aged Man Constrained to Dwell by William Wordsworth
- Ode for General Washington’s Birthday by Robert Burns
- Владимир Набоков – Простая песня, грусть простая
- Humayun To Zobeida (From the Urdu) by Sarojini Naidu
- Жан де Лафонтен – Мельник, Сын его и Осел
- The Pleasures of Melancholy by Thomas Warton
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
- Youth And Age by William Butler Yeats
- Young Man’s Song by William Butler Yeats
- Words by William Butler Yeats
- Wisdom by William Butler Yeats
- Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad? by William Butler Yeats
- Who Goes With Fergus? by William Butler Yeats
- When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats
- When Helen Lived by William Butler Yeats
- What Was Lost by William Butler Yeats
- What Then? by William Butler Yeats
- Veronica’s Napkin by William Butler Yeats
- Vacillation by William Butler Yeats
- Upon A House Shaken By The Land Agitation by William Butler Yeats
- Upon A Dying Lady by William Butler Yeats
- Under The Round Tower by William Butler Yeats
- Under Saturn by William Butler Yeats
- Two Years Later by William Butler Yeats
- Two Songs Of A Fool by William Butler Yeats
- Two Songs From A Play by William Butler Yeats
- Towards Break Of Day by William Butler Yeats
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.