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:
- The Sacrifice of Er-Heb by Rudyard Kipling
- Владимир Маяковский – Рабочий корреспондент
- Николай Гумилев – Какое отравное зелье
- Voltaire At Ferney by W H Auden
- The Detective by Sylvia Plath
- Despair
- Илья Эренбург – Я знаю, будет золотой и долгий
- Eclogue VI by Virgil
- cascades of emptiness by Steve Troyanovich
- Вера Павлова – Слово держу осторожно
- The Uses of the Eye by Paul Blackburn
- Earliest Spring by William Dean Howells
- On Your Midnight Pallet Lying poem – A. E. Housman
- Poet’s Corner poem – Alfred Austin
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Тайна
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
- The most noble bird, wife by Mukeshkumar Raval
- The Morning Breeze by Mousumi Guha Roy
- The ME inside by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- The Labour by Mousumi Guha Roy
- The Drum-Stick Tree by Murali Sivaramakrishnan
- the branches of pine tree by Mousumi Guha Roy
- The Beyond by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- Sting by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- Snake Pit by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- Six-Word Poem by Monty Gilmer
- Rain all along by Mukeshkumar Raval
- Poem by Murali Sivaramakrishnan
- Poem by Murali Sivaramakrishnan
- Parody on a Haiku by Issa by Monty Gilmer
- No Regrets by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- My Mother by Claude McKay
- My impure god and I by Murali Sivaramakrishnan
- My Dear Old Mother by Walter William Safar
- Mother by Shahida Latif
- Lost and Found by Muralidharan Mudaliar
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