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:
- Southern Sunrise by Sylvia Plath
- Николай Языков – Переезд через приморские Альпы
- Иван Крылов – Лев состаревшийся (Басня)
- The Poisoned Present
- Юнна Мориц – Вместо сноски
- Landowners by Sylvia Plath
- To Chadaev poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Identity Card by Mahmoud Darwish
- The Poet And Imagination
- Нина Воронель – Неровен час
- Caught in a Net by Vachel Lindsay
- The Cornfields by Vachel Lindsay
- Валерий Брюсов – Е.Т. (Кто глаза ее оправил)
- Федор Сологуб – Под холодною властью тумана
- Recantation 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
- Как жаль, что много лет назад
- Как живёшь ветеран милиции
- Какая мама молодец
- Как хочу я в День влюбленных
- Как хорошо, что рядом верная подруга
- Как хорошо иметь подругу
- Как тяжело, когда идет война
- Как в поход я собираюсь
- Как воздух, математика нужна
- Как сегодня тихо в классе
- Как Снегурочка дела
- Как тамада я выступаю в роли теоретика
- Как привить ребенку любовь к чтению: советы и рекомендации – Poetry Monster
- Как просто было в юности
- Как прекрасны все цветы
- Ирина Гурина – Как пчёлы чуть не поссорились
- Ирина Гурина – Как появляются листочки
- Как прекрасно твое имя
- Как не бывает утро без рассвета
- Как небо сходится с водой
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