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:
- My Father’s Love Letters poem – Yusef Komunyakaa poems | Poetry Monster
- Николай Заболоцкий – Болезнь
- The Water-Nymph poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Омар Хайям – Часть людей обольщается жизнью земной
- The Uses of the Eye by Paul Blackburn
- Iceland First Seen by William Morris
- When The Green Lies Over The Earth poem – Angelina Weld Grimke poems | Poems and Poetry
- AN ODE FOR BEN JONSON by Robert Herrick
- October by Siegfried Sassoon
- Cantico del Sole poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Remember the Tick by RD McManes
- Олег Григорьев – Вечером девочка Мила
- Олег Григорьев – Сказал я девушке кротко
- Far Within Us #7 by Vasko Popa
- In the Old Age of the Soul poem – Ezra Pound 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
- Afridi Love
- Adoration
- Whispering In Wattle Boughs
- Thoras Song Ashtaroth
- The Swimmer
- The Sick Stockrider
- The Last Leap
- Gone
- An Exiles Farewell
- A Song Of Autumn
- A Dedication
- Medical Ethics
- Vain
- Myself
- My Heritage
- Miserimus
- Memory
- Karazah Karl
- Judith
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