Nothing will hurt you that much despite how you feel
the stress on your back shapes your insight
this splendid November rain Toussaint. I find
you by your marks, he says
an imprint
But when I summon you, I talk to—I say—
my memory of your face. It’s kind of crazy
to others. They’re not very interesting he says.
When I first came to this country, and now
I know the language I say, but I had in a dream
spoken it many years previously. That is,
not the language of the dead the language
of France. I took one year of French in 1964
and then nothing but once, in 1977 I spoke French
in a dream all night: I was in the future I
moved here in 1992. Country of the more
logical than I? though the people of my quartier
know and like me, even as I a foreigner remain strange
You do everything alone a woman said to me.
There are ways to care without interfering
but the French speak of anguish frequently
they are conscious of emotional extremity
a terrible gift. It’s all a gift, he says . . .
some haven’t been opened. I’m not sure
he said that it’s nearly my sixty-seventh birthday
today though it’s the day of the dead hello
we love you they say.
Copyright ©:
Alice Notley

A few random poems:
- Sunt Leones by Stevie Smith
- The Iliad: Book VI (excerpt) poem – Alexander Pope
- Base Words Are Uttered by W H Auden
- Омар Хайям – Мой друг, о завтрашнем заботиться не след
- Human Charms
- Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down by Thomas Lux
- Валерий Брюсов – Последнее желанье
- Николай Гумилев – О, если я весь мир постиг
- Sonnet CVII by William Shakespeare
- Special Problems in Vocabulary by Tony Hoagland
- The Flood In Spring by William Barnes
- AUTUMN GRAPES by Önder Kurt
- Antediluvian Kural On Twitter
- Алексей Жемчужников – Верста на старой дороге
- Зинаида Александрова – Одуванчик
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
- The Tree Of Knowledge
- The Thraldom
- The Thief
- The Spring
- The Request
- The Praise Of Pindar In Imitation Of Horace His Second Ode Book 4
- The Parting
- The Motto
- The Innocent Ill
- The Heart Breaking
- The Grasshopper
- The Given Love
- The Given Heart
- The Epicure
- The Despair
- The Chronicle
- The Change
- Sport
- Resolved To Be Loved
- Resolved Be Loved
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