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:
- Robert Burns: Will Ye Go To The Indies, My Mary?:
- Meant To Be by Russ Pergram
- Grandfather’s Love by Sara Teasdale
- The Harvest Bow by Seamus Heaney
- Шекспир – Проснись, любовь – Сонет 56
- Smoke by Théophile Gautier
- Кондратий Рылеев – Любовь к отчизне
- The Common Life by W H Auden
- Watching Unto God In The Night Season by William Cowper
- The Garden Of Kama Kama The Indian Eros
- Sonnet 80: O, how I faint when I of you do write by William Shakespeare
- Refrigerator, 1957 by Thomas Lux
- The Living Lost by William Cullen Bryant
- Hyperion poem – John Keats poems
- The Song of the Old Guard by Rudyard Kipling
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
- Hand Dark
- Granny
- Future Verdict
- Easter Decorations
- Dawnlight On The Sea
- Dawn
- Dawn God039s Sabbath
- Candle Lord
- By The Camp Fire
- By A Norfolk Broad
- Baptistry
- Aunt Dorothys Lecture
- At Sea
- At Long Last
- An Old Doll
- An Anniversary
- All Saints Day 1868
- All Saints Day 1867
- After Our Likeness
- A Story At Dusk
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