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:
- Dolphin by Robert Lowell
- Scots Prologue for Mr. Sutherland by Robert Burns
- Matter For Gratitude poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- Николай Гумилев – Ольге Людвиговне Кардовской
- Владимир Британишский – Иван Долгорукой
- Владимир Корнилов – Старость
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Богач
- With How Sad Steps, O Moon, Thou Climb’st the Sky by William Wordsworth
- Ballade Of The Summer Term poem – Andrew Lang poems
- The Iliad: Book VI (excerpt) poem – Alexander Pope
- A Man Young And Old: III. The Mermaid by William Butler Yeats
- Haunted by Siegfried Sassoon
- Огюст Барбье – Барабанщик Барра
- A Ripple Song by Rudyard Kipling
- Огюст Барбье – Сегодня я в пути
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
- A Riddle Song. by Walt Whitman
- A Song. by Walt Whitman
- A Glimpse. by Walt Whitman
- An Old Man’s Thought of School. by Walt Whitman
- Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman
- Perfections. by Walt Whitman
- Pensive on Her Dead Gazing, I Heard the Mother of All. by Walt Whitman
- Pensive and Faltering. by Walt Whitman
- Pensive and Faltering. by Walt Whitman
- Patroling Barnegat. by Walt Whitman
- Passage to India. by Walt Whitman
- Ox Tamer, The. by Walt Whitman
- Over the Carnage. by Walt Whitman
- Out of the Rolling Ocean, the Crowd. by Walt Whitman
- Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking. by Walt Whitman
- Out from Behind this Mask. by Walt Whitman
- Others may Praise what They Like. by Walt Whitman
- Or from that Sea of Time. by Walt Whitman
- One Sweeps By. by Walt Whitman
- One Song, America, Before I Go. 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