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:
- Vanity Fair by Sylvia Plath
- Федор Сологуб – Колёса по рельсам гудели
- The Surgeon At 2 A.M. by Sylvia Plath
- Владимир Луговской – Курсантская венгерка
- Any Soul That Drank the Nectar by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. Going for the Cows. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.
- Listening To Rwanda Genocide by Satish Verma
- Bridge-Guard in the Karroo by Rudyard Kipling
- Madonna poem – Alfred Austin
- The Pleasures of Melancholy by Thomas Warton
- The Gipsy Trail by Rudyard Kipling
- come, sun rays by Raj Arumugam
- Юрий Галансков – Рванулось пламя из ствола
- Вероника Тушнова – Ты любил, и я тебя любила
- Владислав Ходасевич – Нет, молодость, ты мне была верна
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
- happiness.html
- At the Zoo poem – A. A. Milne poem
- Vestiges poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- The Flash Reverses Time poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- Que Sera Sera poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- Old Boy poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- Einstein Defining Special Relativity poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- A Tempest in a Teacup poem – A. Van Jordan poems | Poetry Monster
- A Tempest in a Teacup poem – A. Van Jordan poems | Best Poems
- In Memoriam
- Taylor Swift
- Wisdom in Love by Lutfi Abdallah a.k.a Laso
- Why I Do Not Miss You! by Praveen Parasar
- Weaving waves by Shailendra Singh
- Trademark by Samuel Stephen Wakdok
- Time Well-Served by Luis Estable
- This I Beg To Have by Luis Estable
- The True Lover by A. E. Housman
- The Song of My Heart by Olawuyi Mutiu
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