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:
- Омар Хайям – Не бойтесь дарить согревающих слов
- Валерий Брюсов – Есть что-то позорное в мощи природы
- Of Old Sat Freedom poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Федор Сваровский – Путешественники во времени 7
- Summer by Pornika Ganguly
- Love’s Blindness poem – Alfred Austin
- Morning-Land by Siegfried Sassoon
- Аля Кудряшева – Я работаю солнечной батареей
- Robert Burns: To Miss Ferrier: Enclosing the Elegy on Sir J. H. Blair.
- Only Iraq by Mahmoud Darwish
- Spring & Fall: To A Young Child by Ted Hughes
- Frankincense and Myrrh poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Secret by Sylvia Plath
- Christopher Okigbo – Looking Back at His Short-lived Life and Taking Stock of His Poetic Legacy
- A Forest Hymn by William Cullen Bryant
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
- Says. by Walt Whitman
- Savantism. by Walt Whitman
- Salut au Monde. by Walt Whitman
- Runner, The. by Walt Whitman
- Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone. by Walt Whitman
- Roaming in Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Rise, O Days. by Walt Whitman
- Respondez! by Walt Whitman
- Recorders Ages Hence. by Walt Whitman
- Reconciliation. by Walt Whitman
- Race of Veterans. by Walt Whitman
- Quicksand Years. by Walt Whitman
- Proud Music of The Storm by Walt Whitman
- Primeval my Love for the Woman I Love. by Walt Whitman
- Prayer of Columbus. by Walt Whitman
- Prairie States, The. by Walt Whitman
- Prairie-Grass Dividing, The. by Walt Whitman
- Portals. by Walt Whitman
- Poets to Come. by Walt Whitman
- Poem of Remembrance for a Girl or a Boy. 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