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-Haulen O’ The Corn by William Barnes
- Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds by William Shakespeare
- Love Of Jerusalem by Yehuda Amichai
- Николай Языков – Послание к А. Н. Очкину (О, ты, с которым я, от юношеских лет)
- I Swear by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Юлия Друнина – Старая лента, обугленный лес
- Nevermore, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s sonnet: Nevermore by T. Wignesan
- Шарль Бодлер – Жажда небытия
- Couplet 1 poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Selfish World, Selfish People by Shahbaz Khan
- Жан де Лафонтен – Безумец и Мудрец
- Hallowed Pleäces by William Barnes
- Frijolita by Manolo Arriola
- My Spouse Nancy by Robert Burns
- Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave? by Thomas Hardy
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
- Golden Eyes
- From Behind The Lattice
- Feroza
- Feroke
- Fate Knows No Tears
- Farewell
- Fancy
- Famine Song
- Early Love
- Disappointment
- Deserted Gipsys Song Hillside Camp
- Dedication
- Dedication To Malcolm Nicolson
- Camp Followers Song Gomal River
- Back To The Border
- Au Salon
- Atavism
- Ashore
- Among The Sandhills
- Among The Rice Fields
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