by Alan Noakes
Yes the ‘if onlys’ seem to persist for ever
As hovering wraithlike used-up dreams.
‘if only ‘ this or that
On such and such a day
Had varied by an hour or an inch
Or something neglected had been done
Or that something done had been neglected
Then ‘perhaps’ the other might have been:
But then
‘perhaps’ and ‘if only’ are first cousins
Addicted to survival only in our minds.
Copyright ©:
Alan Noakes

A few random poems:
- To a Pupil. by Walt Whitman
- Sonnet 118: Like as to make our appetite more keen by William Shakespeare
- O my faithful by Priyanka Tungana
- Winter Seascape poem – John Betjeman poems
- Epistle to a Young Friend by Robert Burns
- Blue-Eyed Ann by Tobias Smollett
- Sonnet LXVII by William Shakespeare
- Yadwigha, On A Red Couch, Among Lillies by Sylvia Plath
- To Leonide Massine in ‘Cleopatra’ by Siegfried Sassoon
- Олег Чупров – Он впадает в смятенье
- An Ode of the Birth of our Saviour by Robert Herrick
- Art Therapy and Loss
- An Excursion Steamer Sunk in the Tay by William Topaz McGonagall
- Василий Тредиаковский – Видеть все женские лица
- The Commination
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
- Westward on the High-Hilled Plains poem – A. E. Housman
- Wake Not for the World-Heard Thunder poem – A. E. Housman
- Tis Time, I Think, By Wenlock Town poem – A. E. Housman
- Tis Time, I Think, By Wenlock Town poem – A. E. Housman
- Think No More, Lad poem – A. E. Housman
- Think No More, Lad poem – A. E. Housman
- There Pass the Careless People poem – A. E. Housman
- There Pass the Careless People poem – A. E. Housman
- The Winds Out of the West Land Blow poem – A. E. Housman
- The Winds Out of the West Land Blow poem – A. E. Housman
- The Welsh Marches poem – A. E. Housman
- The Welsh Marches poem – A. E. Housman
- The True Lover poem – A. E. Housman
- The Street Sounds to the Soldiers’ Tread poem – A. E. Housman
- The Stinging Nettle poem – A. E. Housman
- The Stinging Nettle poem – A. E. Housman
- The Recruit poem – A. E. Housman
- The Recruit poem – A. E. Housman
- The rainy Pleiads wester poem – A. E. Housman
- The rainy Pleiads wester poem – A. E. Housman
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