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 Neäme Letters by William Barnes
- Halloween by Mac Hammond
- Василий Жуковский – Дружба
- After Midnight by Walid Saba
- The Stones by Sylvia Plath
- Book Fifth-Books by William Wordsworth
- Владимир Степанов – Цыплята (Буква Ц)
- Be With Those Who Help Your Being by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Before you go a little way prospecting by T. Wignesan
- Вера Павлова – Перед дальней дорогой
- Olney Hymn 27: Welcome To The Table by William Cowper
- At the Top of My voice by Vladimir Mayakovsky
- Locksley Hall poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Николай Гумилев – Куранты любви
- To the Right Hon. Lady Anne Coventry by William Somervile
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
- To Foreign Lands. by Walt Whitman
- To a Western Boy. by Walt Whitman
- To a Pupil. by Walt Whitman
- To a President. by Walt Whitman
- To a Locomotive in Winter. by Walt Whitman
- To a Historian. by Walt Whitman
- To a foil’d European Revolutionaire. by Walt Whitman
- To a Common Prostitute. by Walt Whitman
- To a Certain Civilian. by Walt Whitman
- To a Certain Cantatrice. by Walt Whitman
- Thoughts. by Walt Whitman
- Thoughts. by Walt Whitman
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Thou Reader. by Walt Whitman
- Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling. by Walt Whitman
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