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:
- To Mrs. M. B. On Her Birthday poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- To a Lady on Her Remarkable Preservation by Phillis Wheatley
- Colbert Report: Australia by Raj Arumugam
- Nell Barnes by William Henry Davies
- Sonnet 12
- Home After Three Months Away by Robert Lowell
- Николай Карамзин – Триолет Алете в тот день, как ей исполнилось 14 лет
- Василий Жуковский – Гомер
- Ghazal of Rumi by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- The Chant of the Indignant of the World by Sunil Sharma
- Olney Hymn 38: Looking Upwards In A Storm by William Cowper
- Taking Off by Satish Verma
- A Winter Twilight poem – Angelina Weld Grimke poems | Poems and Poetry
- Robert Burns: Saw Ye My Dear, My Philly:
- Unlike, For Example, The Sound Of A Riptooth Saw by Thomas Lux
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
- Vorticism Is A Choka In Its Modular Home
- Violets Beauty Passing
- Victor
- Untitled
- Traveling
- Tracks In The Private Country
- Thoughts Religious Content
- The World
- The Sacred Tree
- The Poet And Imagination
- The Holy Tree
- The Emigrant
- Tears
- Simple Heart
- Silence
- She
- Sealed Appropriate
- Seal
- Sea Salt A Villanelle
- Salamis Quot
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.