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:
- Inversnaid poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The house where I was born (08) by Yves Bonnefoy
- Violets Beauty Passing
- Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman
- Robert Burns: Farewell Thou Stream:
- The Tears of Scotland by Tobias Smollett
- Алексей Жемчужников – Сняла с меня судьба
- The Boa Constrictor Song by Shel Silverstein
- The Man Who Dreamed Of Faeryland by William Butler Yeats
- Николай Языков – Песни (Душа героев и певцов)
- Sonnet 12
- Как не бывает утро без рассвета
- Ольга Высотская – Гости
- On The Cliffs Newport
- Владимир Высоцкий – Не дыми, голова трещит
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
- Kodja Mustafa Pasha poem – Yahya Kemal Beyatli poems | Poetry Monster
- Itri poem – Yahya Kemal Beyatli poems | Poetry Monster
- He comes poem – Yehudah ha-Levi poems | Poetry Monster
- From the morrow poem – Yamabe no Akahito poems | Poetry Monster
- From the bay at Tago poem – Yamabe no Akahito poems | Poetry Monster
- Feeling Lazy poem – Yang Wan-Li poems | Poetry Monster
- A love song poem – Yehudah ha-Levi poems | Poetry Monster
- Don’t Light The Candles by Yahia Al-Samawy
- The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
- Émigrés by Anna Barkova
- A Sure Sign by Georgi Ladonshchikov
- Civil War Songs
- I have outlived my own desires by Alexander Pushkin (Pouchkine)
- In Defense of Santa Claus
- Winter Apples by Tatiana Gusarova, translated by Fledermaus
- Такахама Кёси – О, как ночь коротка
- Такахама Кёси – Неспешно ступает
- Такахама Кёси – Мох зеленый примят
- Такахама Кёси – Мимо порта родного
- Такахама Кёси – Мацумуси пищит
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.