On the wooden deck of the wooden Junk, silent, alone, we lie,
With silver foam about the bow, and a silver moon in the sky:
A glimmer of dimmer silver here, from the anklets round your feet,
Our lips may close on each other’s lips, but never our souls may meet.
For though in my arms you lie at rest, your name I have never heard,
To carry a thought between us two, we have not a single word.
And yet what matter we do not speak, when the ardent eyes have spoken,
The way of love is a sweeter way, when the silence is unbroken.
As a wayward Fancy, tired at times, of the cultured Damask Rose,
Drifts away to the tangled copse, where the wild Anemone grows;
So the ordered and licit love ashore, is hardly fresh and free
As this light love in the open wind and salt of the outer sea.
So sweet you are, with your tinted cheeks and your small caressive hands,
What if I carried you home with me, where our Golden Temple stands?
Yet, this were folly indeed; to bind, in fetters of permanence,
A passing dream whose enchantment charms because of its trancience.
Life is ever a slave to Time; we have but an hour to rest,
Her steam is up and her lighters leave, the vessel that takes me west;
And never again we two shall meet, as we chance to meet to-night,
On the Junk, whose painted eyes gaze forth, in desolate want of sight.
And what is love at its best, but this? Conceived by a passing glance,
Nursed and reared in a transient mood, on a drifting Sea of Chance.
For rudderless craft are all our loves, among the rocks and the shoals,
Well we may know one another’s speech, but never each other’s souls.
Give here your lips and kiss me again, we have but a moment more,
Before we set the sail to the mast, before we loosen the oar.
Good-bye to you, and my thanks to you, for the rest you let me share,
While this night drifted away to the Past, to join the Nights that Were.
A few random poems:
- Bound Home to Mount Song by Wang Wei
- Song—Auld Rob Morris by Robert Burns
- Василий Жуковский – Там небеса и воды ясны
- Mahomed Akrams Appeal To The Stars
- Wuthering Heights by Sylvia Plath
- Владимир Маяковский – Ода революции
- To the Muse poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- Edmundi Trotii Epitaphium poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- They Tell Of The Warsaw Uprising by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Eclogue VI by Virgil
- Николай Заболоцкий – Футбол
- Каждому сроку – свой путь
- For What She Had Done by Shel Silverstein
- Blown from the west by Yosa Buson
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
- Betrayal by Priyanka Dutt
- Anguish of Fate by Pierre Reverdy
- Abyss by Pierre Reverdy
- A Saturday Sunrise by Philo Ikonya
- A reason for you by Pritha halder
- A man who set his journey back to time by Preeth Nambiar
- A Longing for Silence! by Preeth Nambiar
- A Heart Divided by Pierre Reverdy
- A dragonfly that committed suicide by Preeth Nambiar
- Encounter In The Chestnut Avenue by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Duino Elegies: The Tenth Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Duino Elegies: The Fourth Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Eve by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Dedication To M… by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Early Spring by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Exposed On The Cliffs Of The Heart by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Extinguish Thou My Eyes by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Dedication by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Child In Red by Rainer Maria Rilke
- As Once The Winged Energy Of Delight by Rainer Maria Rilke
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
Violet Nicolson ( 1865 – 1904); otherwise known as Adela Florence Nicolson (née Cory), was an English poetess who wrote under the pseudonym of Laurence Hope, however she became known as Violet Nicolson. In the early 1900s, she became a best-selling author. She committed suicide and is buried in Madras, now Chennai, India.