Meeting
by A. S. J. Tessimond
Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell,
Cats’ meetings are neat, tactual, caressive.
Monkeys exchange their fleas before they speak.
Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil reach mutual knowledge.
We then, at first encounter, should be silent;
Not court the cortex but the epidermis;
Not work from inside out but outside in;
Discover each other’s flesh, its scent and texture;
Familiarize the sinews and the nerve-ends,
The hands, the hair; before the inept lips open.
Instead of which we are resonant, explicit.
Our words like windows intercept our meaning.
Our four eyes fence and flinch and awkwardly
Wince into shadow, slide oblique to ambush.
Hands stir, retract. The pulse is insulated.
Blood is turned inwards, lonely; skin unhappy …
While always under all, but interrupted,
Antennae stretch … waver … and almost … touch.

A few random poems:
- A newspaper is a collection of half-injustices by Stephen Crane
- God lay dead in heaven by Stephen Crane
- Haven Woones Fortune A-Twold by William Barnes
- Джон Донн – Когда я с ней, с моим бесценным кладом
- Ariel by Sylvia Plath
- Зинаида Александрова – Смешные человечки
- Robert Burns: Sketch -New Year’s Day [1790]: To Mrs. Dunlop.
- Зинаида Александрова – Давайте, девочки, купаться
- What I Love by Pamela L. Laskin
- Джон Китс – Четыре разных времени в году
- Robert Burns: Divine Service In The Kirk Of Lamington:
- Владимир Маяковский – Рассказ Хренова о Кузнецкстрое и о людях Кузнецка
- Ок Мельникова – Если есть от кого ждать писем
- Robert Burns: Deluded Swain, The Pleasure:
- Reply to a Trimming Epistle, received from a Tailor by Robert Burns
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
- Transient
- To The Serpent
- To The Nameless Soldier
- The Woman And The Flame
- The Wolf039s Postcript To 039little Red Riding Hood039
- The Riddle
- The Queen
- The Poisoned Present
- The Markets Are Down 2 Amp A Quarter
- The Maharishi And The Baby
- The Immigrant
- The Fallen House
- The Poetry That Is Life
- Take My Hands
- Tablet
- Stroll In A Particle
- Stones
- Spanish Banks
- Somber Song
- Poem65
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