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:
- Choriambics — I by Rupert Brooke
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 02 – part 06 by Torquato Tasso
- NIGHT RAID by Satish Verma
- Николай Тихонов – Ленинград
- The Half-way House poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Владимир Маяковский – Помогай фронту… (РОСТА №480)
- The Nymph Complaining For The Death Of Her Faun poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- Far Within Us #7 by Vasko Popa
- Between the Dusk of a Summer Night by William Ernest Henley
- Darkness poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Вера Звягинцева – Стоишь, не поднимая глаз
- Константин Бальмонт – Нам нравятся поэты
- Нина Воронель – Аэродром
- Ballad Of The Despairing Husband by Robert Creeley
- Phantom by Samuel Coleridge
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
- Вера Павлова – Вот и пришли времена
- Вера Павлова – Вопрос ребра
- Вера Павлова – Весть обызвестковалась
- Вера Павлова – Вергилий в предсмертном бреду
- Вера Павлова – В ранец тетрадки собраны
- Вера Павлова – Утро вечера мудренее
- Вера Павлова – Удобряю ресницы снами
- Вера Павлова – Учась любовной науке
- Вера Павлова – У святителя вместо спины
- Вера Павлова – Ты вольно или невольно
- Вера Павлова – Твоя хладность
- Вера Павлова – Трогающему грудь
- Вера Павлова – Торчащее обтесать
- Вера Павлова – Толстые икры правителей
- Вера Павлова – Телефонные кнопки
- Вера Павлова – Сражаться с прошлым
- Вера Павлова – Снежную бабочку-однодневку
- Вера Павлова – Снег
- Вера Павлова – Слово держу осторожно
- Вера Полозкова – Или, к примеру, стоял какой-нибудь
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