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:
- Алексей Толстой – В колокол, мирно дремавший, с налета тяжелая бомба
- Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Николай Языков – Песнь баяна (Люблю смотреть на месяц ясной)
- Never Sure Which You Are by Mary Etta Metcalf
- The Old Land And The Young Land poem – Alfred Austin
- Василий Лебедев-Кумач – В дальний путь идут корабли
- The Dinner-Party poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- As I Ponder’d in Silence. by Walt Whitman
- Владимир Степанов – Мишка (Буква М)
- Life Passing by Pawan Kumar
- Let Me Not Forget by Rabindranath Tagore
- Golgotha by Siegfried Sassoon
- Now, What is Poetry? poem – Yang Wan-Li poems | Poetry Monster
- In the Neolithic Age by Rudyard Kipling
- Василий Жуковский – Цветок
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
- Wind on the Hill by AA Milne
- us_two_by_a_a_milne.html
- twinkletoes.html
- the_morning_walk.html
- the_kings_breakfast.html
- the_dormouse_and_the_doctor.html
- the_christening.html
- rice_pudding.html
- politeness.html
- missing.html
- market_square.html
- lines_and_squares.html
- if_i_were_king.html
- hoppity.html
- happiness.html
- come_out_with_me.html
- buckingham_palace.html
- brownie.html
- at_the_zoo.html
- Water Strider by Aaron Baker
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
