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:
- Long For This World by Sophie Hannah
- The Bear, The Fire, And The Snow by Shel Silverstein
- A Channel Passage by Rupert Brooke
- The Last Breath of a Ship by Tri Tran
- The Flight by Rudyard Kipling
- The Courage Of Shutting-Up by Sylvia Plath
- My Heart Was Full by Stevie Smith
- Владимир Степанов – Жучка и тучка
- Николай Рубцов – Жеребенок
- Вера Павлова – за руку здороваться с рекой
- The Cap And Bells by William Butler Yeats
- The Gardener LXIV: I Spent My Day by Rabindranath Tagore
- Ballad of the Goodly Fere poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Валерий Брюсов – In hас lackimarum valle (в этой долине слез )
- Better And Best by John Oxenham
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
- The Tree Of Knowledge
- The Thraldom
- The Thief
- The Spring
- The Request
- The Praise Of Pindar In Imitation Of Horace His Second Ode Book 4
- The Parting
- The Motto
- The Innocent Ill
- The Heart Breaking
- The Grasshopper
- The Given Love
- The Given Heart
- The Epicure
- The Despair
- The Chronicle
- The Change
- Sport
- Resolved To Be Loved
- Resolved Be Loved
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
