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:
- Tear of warm dew of mind by Seema Gupta
- Sonnet LX by William Shakespeare
- Михаил Лермонтов – Баллада (В избушке позднею порою)
- Happiness poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- On The City Wall
- On Hearing The Bag-Pipe And Seeing “The Stranger” Played At Inverary poem – John Keats poems
- The First Part: Sonnet 1 – In my first years, and prime yet not at height by William Drummond
- Василий Жуковский – Деревенский сторож в полночь
- Robert Burns: Epigram On Rough Roads:
- Come up from the Fields, Father. by Walt Whitman
- Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Valley Of Dry Bones poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- Subject to Change by Marilyn L. Taylor
- The Woodlands by William Barnes
- My Rival by Rudyard Kipling
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
- Apologetic Postscript Of A Year Later by Robert Louis Stevenson
- An English Breeze by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Air Of Diabelli’s by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Se Ipsum by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Quintilianum by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Piscatorem by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Olum by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Nepotem by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Martialem by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Ad Magistrum Ludi by Robert Louis Stevenson
- About The Sheltered Garden Ground by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Valentine’s Song by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Thought by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Good Play by Robert Louis Stevenson
- A Good Boy by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Upon Her Eyes by Robert Herrick
- The Hock-cart, or Harvest Home by Robert Herrick
- To Youth by Robert Herrick
- SOFT MUSIC by Robert Herrick
- The Bride-Cake by Robert Herrick
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