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:
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Ореланна
- Ок Мельникова – Hey jude
- On An Infant (From The Greek) by William Cowper
- Last Words by Sylvia Plath
- The Bayadere
- Николай Языков – Элегия (День ненастный, темный; тучи)
- Old People’s Home by W H Auden
- The New Moon by Sara Teasdale
- From Behind The Lattice
- Stanzas To Miss Wylie poem – John Keats poems
- Solitude poem – Alexander Pushkin
- 1954 by Sharon Olds
- Владимир Высоцкий – Случай
- Five Ways To Kill A Man poem – Andre Breton poems
- Федор Сологуб – Я часть загадки разгадал
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 LXIV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet LXIII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet LXII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet LXI by William Shakespeare
- To the Fringed Gentian by William Cullen Bryant
- To a Waterfowl by William Cullen Bryant
- To A Cloud by William Cullen Bryant
- The Yellow Violet by William Cullen Bryant
- The West Wind by William Cullen Bryant
- The Strange Lady by William Cullen Bryant
- The Skies by William Cullen Bryant
- The Living Lost by William Cullen Bryant
- The Gladness of Nature by William Cullen Bryant
- The Death of the Flowers by William Cullen Bryant
- The Death of Lincoln by William Cullen Bryant
- The Constellations by William Cullen Bryant
- Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant
- Summer Wind by William Cullen Bryant
- Spring in Town by William Cullen Bryant
- October by William Cullen Bryant
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