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:
- The Man In The Bowler Hat
- Альфред Теннисон – Прощание
- The Captain by Stevens Cadet
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Обвинение
- Федор Сологуб – Я часть загадки разгадал
- At The Abbey Theatre by William Butler Yeats
- Paradise Lost: Book 04 poem – John Milton poems
- Grammer’s Shoes by William Barnes
- The Sun Has Long Been Set by William Wordsworth
- “‘Tis because, though in dusky bower” poem – Alfred Austin
- Нина Воронель – Дождливый рассвет
- As I Walked Out One Evening by W. H. Auden
- xai_kou.html
- I Went Down into the Desert by Vachel Lindsay
- The (REAL) Tale of the Tortoise and the Hare by Ross D Tyler
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