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:
- Love’s Wisdom poem – Alfred Austin
- Conversation with Comrade Lenin by Vladimir Mayakovsky
- Constantias Song
- Аля Кудряшева – Если ты, к примеру, кролик с шелковистыми ушами
- Robert Burns: Lady Onlie, Honest Lucky:
- For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid by William Stafford
- Mild is the Parting Year by Walter Savage Landor
- Butterfly by Ramesh Anand
- Those Born In Obscure Times poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- A Border Burn poem – Alfred Austin
- The Thief
- My Mouth Hovers Across Your Breasts
- Dion [See Plutarch] by William Wordsworth
- Statistic by Shivam Pandya
- Late Fragment by Raymond Carver
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
- Woken Up By Beautiful Dreams
- The Poet Angels Who Came To Dinner
- The Nomad039s Vision Ode To A Skylark Dressed In Black
- The Man That Poetry Made
- Power Of Thought
- Once Was A Singer For God Remembering Nekia
- My Aroma
- Lost Love Is Never Lost
- Holiday Letter For A Poet Gone To War
- Gratitudes Of A Dozen Roses
- Every Hour Henceforth
- Cell Mate
- Calling The Spirits
- Angel Of Christmas Love Shining Bright
- Angel Of Better Days To Come
- All Night In Savannah The Wind Wrote Poetry
- The Solitary Oak On Mount Kremlin Bicetre
- The Prison Of The Past
- The Dead Woman
- Pathos Is The Skyward Tanka
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
