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:
- Azure and Gold poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Mowgli’s Song by Rudyard Kipling
- Василий Жуковский – К князю Вяземскому
- Sonnet (IX) : Flesh o flesh ! The momentous , the mortal , the doomed by Neelam Sinha
- Robert Burns: Third Epistle To J. Lapraik:
- Poetic Justice by Robby Charters
- A Prophecy: To George Keats In America poem – John Keats poems
- About Troy poem – Zbigniew Herbert poems | Poetry Monster
- Demon by Vladimir Marku
- Solid, Ironical, Rolling Orb. by Walt Whitman
- On A Celebrated Event In Ancient History by William Wordsworth
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Роза и дева
- The Editor by William Ellery Leonard
- On a certain Lady at Court poem – Alexander Pope
- The Smiles Of The Bathers by Weldon Kees
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
- Malay Song
- Malaria
- Mahomed Akrams Appeal To The Stars
- Love Lightly
- Lost Delight
- Listen Beloved
- Lines By Taj Mahomed
- Less Than The Dust
- Lallji My Desire
- Lalila To The Ferengi Lover
- Kotri By The River
- Khristna And His Flute
- Khan Zadas Song On The Hillside
- Kashmiri Song
- Kashmiri Song By Juma
- In The Early Pearly Morning
- Illusion
- I Shall Forget
- I Arise And Go Down To The River
- Hira Singhs Farewell To Burmah
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