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:
- If I To You But Sorry Bring poem – Alfred Austin
- Виктор Гончаров – Не знаю, что делать с душою
- Robert Burns: Tam Samson’s Elegy: When this worthy old sportman went out, last muirfowl season, he supposed it was to be, in Ossian’s phrase, “the last of his fields,” and expressed an ardent wish to die and be buried in the muirs. On this hint the author composed his elegy and epitaph.-R.B., 1787.
- Владимир Корнилов – В прачечной
- Orlando Furioso Canto 19 by Ludovico Ariosto
- When to the sessions of sweet silent thought (Sonnet 30) by William Shakespeare
- Николай Языков – Прощальная песня (В последний раз приволье жизни братской)
- Song—A Rose-bud by my Early Walk by Robert Burns
- Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton by T. S. Eliot
- In the Time of War, XII by W H Auden
- Алексей Плещеев – Весна
- Lucky by Thomas Lux
- last words to the moon by Raj Arumugam
- They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine
- Гавриил Державин – На выздоровление мецената
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 папа женился
- К той, что названа Кариной
- Как Лера чудо искала
- Как Муромец Илья когда-то
- Как на Масляной неделе
- К 8-му марта
- К нам приходит в день февральский снежною тропой
- Из головы у меня не выходишь
- Из всех искусств кинематограф
- Иван Варавва – Жаворонок
- Иван Варавва – В закубанском лесу
- Иван Варавва – Выйду в степь, на поля плодородные
- Иван Варавва – Раскинет объятия поле
- Иван Варавва – Соловей на веточке
- Иван Варавва – Кубань
- Иван Варавва – Мать Кубань
- Иван Варавва – На окраине села
- Иван Мятлев – Соловей
- Иван Мятлев – Старушка
- Иван Мятлев – Звезда
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