by Ajmer Rode
Kalli followed me eight miles
to the market where
animals were traded like slaves.
Cows goats bullocks camels
Kalli was black beautiful and six
prime age for a water buffalo.
She was dry. Repelled bulls as if she had
decided never to go green.
Hard to afford, my father decided
to sell her.
She obeyed as I led her
by the steel chain, one end in my hand
the other round her neck.
I was fifteen. Her nervousness was over
soon after we entered the market
where sellers occupied
their given spaces like matrimonials
on a large weekly page.
Kalli sat down with no emotion in her eyes
like an ascetic close to nirvana.
I sat stood walked around like a
neglected calf. Nobody bought Kalli.
She followed me 8 miles back home
I wasn’t sure if Father was sad
or glad to see her back. He just
looked at her like a family member
who had missed the train.

A few random poems:
- Ольга Берггольц – Синеглазый мальчик, синеглазый
- Николай Карамзин – К Алине на смерть ее супруга
- Вергилий – Георгики
- Parody on a Haiku by Issa by Monty Gilmer
- ode to love by Rohit Sridharan
- Friend by Rabindranath Tagore
- Robert Burns: The Bonie Lass Of Albany:
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Михаил Кузмин – Зачем в тот вечер роковой
- Robert Burns: The Charming Month Of May:
- Ольга Берггольц – Новогодний тост
- Ольга Ермолаева – Барственный Шехтель все ирисы лепит на фриз
- Cambodian Flower by Norma Martiri
- Absence poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Владимир Маяковский – Бруклинский мост
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
- Infelix
- Hemlock Furrows
- Genius
- Fragment
- Dying
- Dreams Beauty
- Depths
- Battle Stars
- Aspiration
- Answer Me
- Adelina Patti
- The Nuclear Ghost Towns
- The Conditional
- The Ugly Little Bird
- Not A Star
- Mountain Wellhead
- Lightning In The Dark Night Skies
- In The Bus That Is Frantically Rushing From Cairo To Port Said
- Immoral Laboratories
- Hope
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