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:
- Николай Рубцов – Хороший улов
- Sonnet 91: Some glory in their birth, some in their skill by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 96: Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 88: When thou shalt be disposed to set me light by William Shakespeare
- Eclogue:–John, Jealous At Shroton Feäir by William Barnes
- Written Upon A Blank Leaf In “The Complete Angler.” by William Wordsworth
- Валерий Брюсов – Последнее желанье
- Lover’s Gifts II: Come to My Garden Walk by Rabindranath Tagore
- Владимир Маяковский – Гевлок Вильсон
- Валерий Брюсов – К портрету Лермонтова
- We embraced and talked about rains by Vinko Kalinic
- Ок Мельникова – 3. 45 a. m
- Robert Burns: Jerusalem Tavern, Dumfries.: Inscription On A Goblet
- The Detective by Sylvia Plath
- Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry
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
- Gravity Suspended
- From Death
- Forfeiture
- For My Mother
- Fly Fly Butterfly
- Even The Rain
- Destiny Far Away
- Conversation
- Calling All Angels
- At The Locks Of The Void
- Anthem
- All In A Word
- A Teenage Pregnancy
- A Painting Morning
- A Child Of War
- Your Dream
- Ars Poetica
- The Vision Of Cassandra
- The Sacrifice Of Iphigenia
- The Lament Of The Old Nurse
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
