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:
- Николай Заболоцкий – Бетховен
- The Lesson by Roger McGough
- flight_of_stairs.html
- English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 20. Филип Джеймс Бэйли.
- Юнна Мориц – На смерть Джульетты
- The Bankrupt Peace-Maker by Vachel Lindsay
- Lamia. Part I poem – John Keats poems
- A Week by Thomas Hardy
- I saw Old General at Bay. by Walt Whitman
- The Pleasure of Princes
- The Bard by William Gilmore Simms
- Doomes-Day: The First Houre by William Alexander
- Владимир Высоцкий – Я сказал врачу: “Я за все плачу!”
- Sonnet 148: O me! what eyes hath love put in my head by William Shakespeare
- The Cat in the Kitchen by Robert Bly
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
- For What As Easy by W H Auden
- Five Songs – II by W H Auden
- Fish in the Unruffled Lakes by W H Auden
- Eyes Look Into The Well by W H Auden
- Eyes Look Into The Well by W H Auden
- Edward Lear by W H Auden
- Doggerel by a Senior Citizen by W H Auden
- Deftly, Admiral, Cast Your Fly by W H Auden
- Two Songs for Hedli Anderson by W. H. Auden
- The Shield of Achilles by W. H. Auden
- The More Loving One by W. H. Auden
- The Fall of Rome by W. H. Auden
- September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden
- On the Circuit by W. H. Auden
- In Memory of W. B. Yeats by W. H. Auden
- In Memory of Sigmund Freud by W. H. Auden
- If I could tell you by W. H. Auden
- For Friends Only by W. H. Auden
- Epitaph on a Tyrant by W. H. Auden
- Death’s Echo by W H Auden
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