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 – Какая тёмная зима
- Алексей Толстой – В совести искал я долго обвиненья
- XI: Some Verses: To His Worthy Friend Master Walter Quin by William Alexander
- Валерий Брюсов – И небо и серое море
- For Birds by Nithin Purple
- Олег Бундур – Дедушка воспитывает папу
- The Great Carbuncle by Sylvia Plath
- To a Young Child poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Sonnet 58: That god forbid, that made me first your slave by William Shakespeare
- Far Within Us #5 by Vasko Popa
- Dark spring by Yvor Winters
- All Night In Savannah The Wind Wrote Poetry
- Deeply Morbid by Stevie Smith
- Fairy Tale by Robert Desnos
- Нина Воронель – Высокосный год
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
- On The Tomb Of A Priestess Of Artemis by Sappho
- To One who Loved not Poetry by Sappho
- To One False In Love by Sappho
- To Aphrodite by Sappho
- To A Girl In A Garden by Sappho
- Before They Were Mothers by Sappho
- The Torments Of Love by Sappho
- The Silver Moon by Sappho
- The Death Of Adonis by Sappho
- Like The Sweet Apple by Sappho
- In the spring twilight by Sappho
- The Silver Moon by Sappho
- Sappho To Her Girlfriends by Sappho
- To One who Loved not Poetry by Sappho
- On The Tomb Of A Priestess Of Artemis by Sappho
- Of course I love you by Sappho
- Ode To A Loved One by Sappho
- My Garden by Sappho
- Mother, I Cannot Mind My Wheel by Sappho
- Loneliness by Sappho
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