I am sick today,
sick in my body,
eyes wide open, silent,
I lie on the bed of childbirth.
Why do I, so used to the nearness of death,
to pain and blood and screaming,
now uncontrollably tremble with dread?
A nice young doctor tried to comfort me,
and talked about the joy of giving birth.
Since I know better than he about this matter,
what good purpose can his prattle serve?
Knowledge is not reality.
Experience belongs to the past.
Let those who lack immediacy be silent.
Let observers be content to observe.
I am all alone,
totally, utterly, entirely on my own,
gnawing my lips, holding my body rigid,
waiting on inexorable fate.
There is only one truth.
I shall give birth to a child,
truth driving outward from my inwardness.
Neither good nor bad; real, no sham about it.
With the first labor pains,
suddenly the sun goes pale.
The indifferent world goes strangely calm.
I am alone.
It is alone I am.

A few random poems:
- Attempted Assassination of the Queen by William Topaz McGonagall
- Владимир Корнилов – Двое
- Владимир Корнилов – Неподвижность
- Orlando Furioso Canto 20 by Ludovico Ariosto
- The Madness Of King Goll by William Butler Yeats
- birch_tree.html
- Song of the Broad-Axe. by Walt Whitman
- Your Dream
- Envoi poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Николай Огарев – Осеннее чувство
- Владимир Британишский – Сон: в детстве, весной, в лесу
- An Ode in Time of Hesitation by William Vaughn Moody
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Недоверчивость
- The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje
- Night Shift by Sylvia Plath
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
- Slant by Stephen Dunn
- Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry by Stephen Dunn
- Named by Stephen Dunn
- Landscape At The End Of The Century by Stephen Dunn
- I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone by Stephen Dunn
- Essay On The Personal by Stephen Dunn
- Biography In The First Person by Stephen Dunn
- At The Smithville Methodist Church by Stephen Dunn
- Allegory Of The Cave by Stephen Dunn
- The White Peacock by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Quality of Courage by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Innovator by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Hemp by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The General Public by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Fiddling Wood by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The City Revisited by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Breaking Point by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Talk by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Road and Hills by Stephen Vincent Benet
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