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:
- Autumn Leaves by Thomas J Camp
- Late Light by Philip Levine
- I See so Deeply Within Myself by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Forever Closed by Margaret Marie Hubbard
- English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 26. Филип Джеймс Бэйли.
- From The ‘Antigone’ by William Butler Yeats
- Sun Light poem – Ammar Hussain poems | Poems and Poetry
- Meeting and Passing by Robert Frost
- Игорь Северянин – Симфония
- Outset by Mike Yuan
- The Sea Took Pity poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Каждому сроку – свой путь
- Ольга Седакова – Ветер прощанья
- Cromwell’s Return poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- Огюст Барбье – Мазаччио
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
- Spring by Ramesh Anand
- Remember the Tick by RD McManes
- re_word by RD McManes
- Rain by Reena Ribalow
- Carnal Knowledge by Rebecca Elson
- We Astronomers by Rebecca Elson
- This Morning by Raymond Carver
- Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year by Raymond Carver
- No Chance To A New Life by Rashmi Sreekumar
- Live for the moment, be in the present by Ramesh V Deshpande
- Late Fragment by Raymond Carver
- Jobless by Rashmi
- I’m not listening by Rashmi Sreekumar
- Flutter by Rashmi Sreekumar
- Fear by Raymond Carver
- Drinking While Driving by Raymond Carver
- Circulation by Raymond Carver
- Butterfly by Ramesh Anand
- Bobber by Raymond Carver
- Autumn by Ramesh Anand
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