To make sure
You have not said:
“I love you,”
They smell your breath.
They even smell your heart
Trying times are these, my darling.
They flog love
Tied to the post of the cul-de-sac
We must hide love in the closet.
In this serpentine maze
This crooked cold corner
They feed the fire
With poems and songs
Thinking, too, is risky.
Those who, late at night, knock on the door,
Are there to kill the lamp.
We must hide the light in the closet.
Then there are the butchers
Stationed at all cross-roads,
Armed with a block and a bloody cleaver.
Trying times these are, my darling.
Surgically,
They plant smiles on lips,
And songs in the mouths.
We must hide joy in the closet.
On lilies and lilacs,
They roast the canaries.
Trying times these are, my darling.
Drunk with victory, the Devil,
Celebrates our wake.
We must hide God in the closet.

A few random poems:
- The Fable of Dryope – Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 9, [v. 324-393] poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Валерий Брюсов – Гимн Афродите
- Fleckno, an English Priest at Rome poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- Song—Stay my Charmer by Robert Burns
- A June-Tide Echo poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Robert Burns: Address To The Woodlark:
- My teacher wasn’t half as nice as yours seems to be by Roald Dahl
- Far In a Western Brookland poem – Alfred Edward Housman
- Владимир Луговской – Лимонная ночь
- Love Of Life poem – Alfred Austin
- Robert Burns: Inscription To Miss Graham Of Fintry:
- Threshold by Rabindranath Tagore
- Новелла Матвеева – Будьте, как дети
- Hush’d be the Camps To-day. by Walt Whitman
- Юрий Верховский – Месяцу, заре, звезде, лазури
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
- Sonnet I
- Sonnet 12
- Sonnet 11
- Sonnet 10
- Sonnet 08
- Sonnet 07
- Sonnet 06
- Sonnet 05
- Sonnet 04
- Sonnet 03
- Sonnet 02
- Sonnet 01
- Resurgam
- Rendezvous
- On The Cliffs Newport
- On A Theme In The Greek Anthology
- Ode In Memory Of The American Volunteers Fallen For France
- Maktoob
- Lyonesse
- Liebestod
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