by Ajmer Rode
Father meditated with feet
in a pan of warm water
before sleep every evening
He never expected my mother
who brought him the water
to kneel.
Rather than wash in hurry
he wanted his feet left alone
let the dust particles loosen
as he quietly thanked
his feet and a supreme being
he vaguely believed in
Dislodging particles
spawned sensations
he could experience no other way
Not even from the touch
of Mother’s caring hands
Slowly his feet calmed
forgetting the bare-soled work
in the rugged fields
where I sometimes
joined him to help end the day
Meditation must start
in the head said Hegel
Head is where the mind is
and mind is where
impure spirit waits healing.
Father had never heard of Hegel
and his dialectics
striving toward spiritual perfection
Nor of guru Patanjali
who said
your body is your mind
stretched into bone and flesh.
It matters little
where you start the meditation
Father simply dipped his feet
in warm water
every evening.

A few random poems:
- Владимир Солоухин – У тихой речки детство проводя
- On a Fan of the Author’s Design poem – Alexander Pope
- A Boston Ballad, 1854. by Walt Whitman
- The Call Of The Far — English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- Last Battle Cid
- O Living Always—Always Dying. by Walt Whitman
- Writing to Onegin by Ruth Padel
- Follower by Seamus Heaney
- Leaving and Leaving You by Sophie Hannah
- Homecoming of Love on the Sands by Rafael Alberti
- Ulster by Rudyard Kipling
- I Write a Poem by Aiyah De Torres
- The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence by W. S. Merwin
- Blue Evening by Rupert Brooke
- The Gardener XXXIV: Do Not Go, My Love by Rabindranath Tagore
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
- Reverie Of Ormuz The Persian
- Reverie Of Mahomed Akram At The Tamarind Tank
- Request
- Reminiscence Of Mahomed Akram
- Protest By Zahir U Din
- Prayer
- Palm Trees By The Sea
- On The City Wall
- On Pilgrimage
- Ojira To Her Lover
- Oh Unforgotten And Only Lover
- Oh Masters
- Oh Life I Have Taken You For My Lover
- No Rival Like The Past
- Nay Not To Night
- My Paramour Was Loneliness
- My Desire
- Middle Age
- Memory
- Marriage Thoughts By Morsellin Khan
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