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:
- Goddess In The Wood, The by Rupert Brooke
- A REQUEST TO THE GRACES by Robert Herrick
- Here’s to the Mice! by Vachel Lindsay
- Indications, The. by Walt Whitman
- Address to a Haggis by Robert Burns
- Sonnet 75: So are you to my thoughts as food to life by William Shakespeare
- An All-Night Sea Fight by William Topaz McGonagall
- Иван Варавва – Соловей на веточке
- Song IX: Ho Ye Who Seek Saving by William Morris
- Sonnet LVI by William Shakespeare
- Валерий Брюсов – Дождь перед ночью
- To The Don poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Ringlet poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of St. Paul’s, Dr. John by Thomas Carew
- The Starlight Night poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
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
- Nominalism Is A Liquid Kuhi
- My Mother’s Grief
- If Truth In Hearts That Perish
- I Havent Betrayed You My Hometown
- Eclipse Of Love
- Divided Passion
- Death039s Claim
- Dear Bhikkhu A Eulogy
- As With A Senryu S Hardening Ridge
- A Gogyohka And The Forgotten Panopticon
- A Faded Postcard Is A Tanka Daydream
- The Dead Woman poem – Pablo Neruda
- If Truth in Hearts That Perish poem – A. E. Housman
- Fragment of a Greek Tragedy poem – A. E. Housman
- Diffugere Nives poem – A. E. Housman
- Water Strider
- The Infernal Regions
- Honeycomb
- Dark Matter
- Wet City Night
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.