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:
- Swift’s Epitaph by William Butler Yeats
- The Red Lacquer Music-Stand poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Владимир Корнилов – Женщины
- Нина Воронель – Бабий стих
- Sir Richard’s Song by Rudyard Kipling
- The Princess (part 6) poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Владимир Маяковский – Новый враг
- I don’t want to have you by Vinko Kalinic
- A Magic Moment I Remember poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Paint-Kings by Washington Allston
- Владимир Гиляровский – Белоснежные туманы
- In Abeyance by Satish Verma
- Written In Cananore
- Synge’s Grave by Winifred Mary Letts
- Birthday Ode for 31st December, 1787 by Robert Burns
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
- Nominalism Is A Liquid Kuhi
- My Mother’s Grief
- If Truth In Hearts That Perish
- I Havent Betrayed You My Hometown
- Eclipse Of Love
- Divided Passion
- Death039s Claim
- Dear Bhikkhu A Eulogy
- As With A Senryu S Hardening Ridge
- A Gogyohka And The Forgotten Panopticon
- A Faded Postcard Is A Tanka Daydream
- The Dead Woman poem – Pablo Neruda
- If Truth in Hearts That Perish poem – A. E. Housman
- Fragment of a Greek Tragedy poem – A. E. Housman
- Diffugere Nives poem – A. E. Housman
- Water Strider
- The Infernal Regions
- Honeycomb
- Dark Matter
- Wet City Night
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