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:
- The Gardener LXIX: I Hunt for the Golden Stag by Rabindranath Tagore
- A Winter Bluejay by Sara Teasdale
- A Man Young And Old: IX. The Secrets Of The Old by William Butler Yeats
- Гавриил Державин – Афинейскому витязю
- Comments: A Life Well Lived is Always an Inspiration – My Friend Muniappan Velu of Chennai, India
- Федор Тютчев – Князю Горчакову
- Федор Сологуб – Ариадна
- Sonnet 108: What’s in the brain that ink may character by William Shakespeare
- For the Bed at Kelmscott by William Morris
- The Owl And The Lark poem – Alfred Austin
- Love Compared To A Game Of Tables by William Strode
- The Buddhist poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Adieu poem – Yuvraj Johri poems | Poetry Monster
- Аля Кудряшева – Я работаю солнечной батареей
- Sonet 53 by William Alexander
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
- The Heart That Is Pining by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- The Clime Of My Birth by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- The Bird Has Vanished by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- Solitude at an Inn by Thomas Warton
- Ribbons & Pearls by Timothy Cole
- Refrigerator, 1957 by Thomas Lux
- Timothy Thomas Fortune – Timothy Thomas Fortune
- Plague Victims Catapulted Over Walls Into Besieged City by Thomas Lux
- On King Arthur’s Round Table at Winchester by Thomas Warton
- Ode To Sleep by Thomas Warton
- My Precious Girl by Tiffany Ann Monroe
- My Miracle Valentine by Tirtha Raj Baral (Sanu Punatare)
- Mother Earth; Her Beauty And Her Destruction by TMBedell
- Motel Seedy by Thomas Lux
- Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down by Thomas Lux
- Lucky by Thomas Lux
- Love’s Divinest Power by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- Love of the heart by Timileyin Gabriel Olajuwon
- Just A Dance by Tiffany M
- Thomas Lux – Thomas Lux
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