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:
- Вера Павлова – Сражаться с прошлым
- I’ve Lived To See Desire Vanish poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Владимир Маяковский – Жид
- Олег Бундур – Поросенок и свиньи
- Sonnet Xvi Who Shall Invoke Her
- Владимир Маяковский – Универсальный ответ
- Westgate-On-Sea poem – John Betjeman poems
- Николай Карамзин – Послание к женщинам
- A Noun Sentence by Mahmoud Darwish
- The Puzzled Game-Birds by Thomas Hardy
- Владимир Маяковский – Шумики, шумы и шумищи
- From The Cuckoo And The Nightingale by William Wordsworth
- Eclogue:–The Veäiries by William Barnes
- Termites by Piera Chen
- Arms And The Boy by Wilfred Owen
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
- Untitled XIX by Yunus Emre
- Untitled XIV by Yunus Emre
- Untitled XIII by Yunus Emre
- Untitled XII by Yunus Emre
- Untitled XI by Yunus Emre
- Untitled X by Yunus Emre
- Untitled VIII by Yunus Emre
- Untitled VII by Yunus Emre
- Untitled V by Yunus Emre
- Untitled IX by Yunus Emre
- Untitled IV by Yunus Emre
- Untitled III by Yunus Emre
- Untitled II by Yunus Emre
- Untitled I by Yunus Emre
- Love Compared To A Game Of Tables by William Strode
- Keepe On Your Maske (Version for his Mistress) by William Strode
- Keepe On Your Maske And Hide Your Eye by William Strode
- Justification by William Strode
- Jacke-On-Both-Sides by William Strode
- William Strode – William Strode
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