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:
- I Thought Of You by Sara Teasdale
- not_love_perhaps.html
- Felix Randal poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Владимир Маяковский – Рабочий! (РОСТА №735)
- The Caucas poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Robert Burns: I’m O’er Young To Marry Yet:
- Sharing Eve’s Apple poem – John Keats poems
- Who is the Bogeyman? by Ross D Tyler
- Life Passing by Pawan Kumar
- REGENERATING by Satish Verma
- Mortality poem – John Betjeman poems
- Гавриил Державин – Песенка
- Block City by Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Voice of Woman by Shahida Latif
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Элегия (Мысль в разлуке с вещим сном)
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
- At the Party by W H Auden
- Old People’s Home by W H Auden
- O What Is That Sound by W H Auden
- O Tell Me The Truth About Love by W H Auden
- Nocturne by W H Auden
- A New Age by W H Auden
- Like A Vocation by W H Auden
- Let A Florid Music Praise by W H Auden
- Law, Like Love by W H Auden
- At Last the Secret is Out by W H Auden
- Lady Weeping at the Crossroads by W H Auden
- It’s No Use Raising A Shout by W H Auden
- In the Time of War, XII by W H Auden
- In Praise Of Limestone by W H Auden
- Here War Is Simple by W H Auden
- Give me a doctor by W H Auden
- from The Cave of Making by W H Auden
- from In Time of War by W H Auden
- Friday’s Child by W H Auden
- Friday’s Child by W H Auden
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