A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)
The world’s
not wanton
only wild and wavering
I wanted to choose words that even you
would have to be changed by
Take the word
of my pulse, loving and ordinary
Send out your signals, hoist
your dark scribbled flags
but take
my hand
All wars are useless to the dead
My hands are knotted in the rope
and I cannot sound the bell
My hands are frozen to the switch
and I cannot throw it
The foot is in the wheel
When it’s finished and we’re lying
in a stubble of blistered flowers
eyes gaping, mouths staring
dusted with crushed arterial blues
I’ll have done nothing
even for you?
A few random poems:
- Федор Сологуб – Плачет безутешная вдова
- Meary-Ann’s Child by William Barnes
- Stroll In A Particle
- Омар Хайям – Двести лет проживешь, или тысячу лет
- xai_kou0.html
- us_two_by_a_a_milne.html
- Эмиль Верхарн – Восстание
- To The Rose Upon The Rood Of Time by William Butler Yeats
- Let Me Not Forget by Rabindranath Tagore
- Anecdote Of Canna by Wallace Stevens
- I Chide Not At The Seasons poem – Alfred Austin
- Robert Burns: To A Louse: On Seeing One On A Lady’s Bonnet, At Church
- Огюст Барбье – Прогресс
- Sonnet. On A Picture Of Leander poem – John Keats poems
- Владимир Британишский – Будто катаясь на коньках
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

Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012) was an American poet, essayist, and feminist.