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:
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – На берегу
- Вера Полозкова – Детство
- To Charles Cowden Clarke poem – John Keats poems
- Владимир Маяковский – Бродвей
- Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath
- Acon and Rhodope by Walter Savage Landor
- Two Songs
- To A Soldier In Hospital by Winifred Mary Letts
- Владимир Луговской – Радость
- The Eve Of Saint Mark. A Fragment poem – John Keats poems
- Степан Щипачев – Соловей
- Waking In March by Philip Levine
- Scented Herbage of My Breast. by Walt Whitman
- The Old Land And The Young Land poem – Alfred Austin
- To Aphrodite by Sappho
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
- Mother’s Death 1981 by Michael S Wilson
- Money, for a Decent Human Life without You by Mike Yuan
- Migration of the Mind by Mike Yuan
- Mid-Autumn Moon by Mike Yuan
- Meeting with Te Rauparaha by Michael O’Leary
- Matrimony by Mike Yuan
- March on, Yes! by Miles
- Make Love and War by Michael O’Leary
- Ma Wonders by Miraj Patel
- Lullaby of the Onion by Miguel Hernandez
- Live With Me On Earth Under the Invisible Daylight Moon by Milton Acorn
- Life of Paradoxes by Mike Yuan
- Languaculture by Mike Yuan
- Key and Knife (Two Haiku) by Mike Yuan
- (Inner Tube) by Michael Ondaatje
- In the Forest of Life by Mike Yuan
- If You Ask Me by Miraj Patel
- If I Got You by Miraj Patel
- I Wish This Lovely Time Never Ends by Miraj Patel
- I sink as I sail magnificently by Michael Nikoletseas
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