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:
- A Pastoral Upon The Birth of Prince Charles: Presented to the King, and Set by Mr Nic. Laniere by Robert Herrick
- One Ran Before by Yvor Winters
- Bones by Walter de la Mare
- Zion by Rudyard Kipling
- The Ad-Dressing Of Cats by T. S. Eliot
- Epitaph On H. Walmsley, Esq., by William Lisle Bowles
- Love Equals Insanity by Talha Jafri
- “What weeping, or what dewfall,” by Torquato Tasso
- The First Part: Sonnet 14 – Nor Arne, nor Mincius, nor stately Tiber, by William Drummond
- The Mantra-Yoga poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Mother Of A Poet by Sara Teasdale
- Executive poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Goblin Revel by Siegfried Sassoon
- Reconciliation by Siegfried Sassoon
- Two sparrows and my heart by Nizar Sartawi
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
- Robinson by Weldon Kees
- The End Of The Library by Weldon Kees
- Late Evening Song by Weldon Kees
- La Vita Nuova by Weldon Kees
- Interregnum by Weldon Kees
- Dead March by Weldon Kees
- Covering Two Years by Weldon Kees
- Colloquy by Weldon Kees
- A Pastiche For Eve by Weldon Kees
- A Musician’s Wife by Weldon Kees
- 1926 by Weldon Kees
- Woods by Wendell Berry
- What We Need Is Here by Wendell Berry
- Water by Wendell Berry
- The Wish to be Generous by Wendell Berry
- The Silence by Wendell Berry
- The Real Work by Wendell Berry
- The peace of wild things by Wendell Berry
- The Man Born to Farming by Wendell Berry
- The Lilies by Wendell Berry
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