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:
- Gathering Leaves by Robert Frost
- Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been by William Shakespeare
- Алексей Хомяков – Просьба
- This Evening Also by Paul Celan
- I Had To Leave by Subhash Misra
- Monument by Satish Verma
- Юнна Мориц – Смелый гусь
- Charity thou art a lie, by Stephen Crane
- Ок Мельникова – Моя муза любитель блюза
- Crossroads by Suchi Gaur
- Street Cries by Sarojini Naidu
- The Arrival Of The Bee Box by Sylvia Plath
- The Bowling-Green by William Somervile
- An Appointment by William Butler Yeats
- Memorials Of A Tour In Scotland, by William Wordsworth
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
- Book Fifth-Books by William Wordsworth
- Book Eleventh: France [concluded] by William Wordsworth
- Book Eighth: Retrospect–Love Of Nature Leading To Love Of Man by William Wordsworth
- “Behold Vale! I Said, When I Shall Con” by William Wordsworth
- Beggars by William Wordsworth
- “Avaunt All Specious Pliancy Of Mind” by William Wordsworth
- At Applewaite, Near Keswick 1804 by William Wordsworth
- ” As faith thus sanctified the warrior’s crest” by William Wordsworth
- Artegal And Elidure by William Wordsworth
- Anticipation, October 1803 by William Wordsworth
- Animal Tranquility And Decay by William Wordsworth
- Anecdote For Fathers by William Wordsworth
- Andrew Jones by William Wordsworth
- “And Is It Among Rude Untutored Dales” by William Wordsworth
- An Evening Walk by William Wordsworth
- Among All Lovely Things My Love Had Been by William Wordsworth
- Alice Fell, Or Poverty by William Wordsworth
- After-Thought by William Wordsworth
- “Advance – Come Forth From Thy Tyrolean Ground” by William Wordsworth
- Admonition by William Wordsworth
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