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:
- I did not want to stop you by Luz del Alba Nicola
- Владимир Луговской – Гуниб
- The Five Adorations poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Юлия Друнина – Елка
- Ode to the Bat , a Sonnet
- At First. To Charlotte Cushman. by Sidney Lanier
- I Heard an Angel by William Blake
- Николай Гумилев – Крыса
- In A Garden by Sara Teasdale
- Алексей Толстой – Пусть тот, чья честь не без укора
- A Palanquin Of Love by Vaishnavi Prakash
- Exposure by Wilfred Owen
- Шекспир – Не позволяю помыслам ревнивым – Сонет 57
- There is a Community of Spirit by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- As Toilsome I Wander’d. by Walt Whitman
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
- Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 75: So are you to my thoughts as food to life by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CVIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CVII: Not Mine Own Fears, Nor the Prophetic Soul by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CVII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CVI by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CLIV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CLIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CLII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CLI by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CL by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CIX by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CIV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CI by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet C by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 9: Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 98: From you have I been absent in the spring by William Shakespeare
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