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:
- Николай Заболоцкий – Ходоки
- Above the Battle’s Front by Vachel Lindsay
- Константин Бальмонт – Чудовище с клеймом
- A poodle and a hound by Victoria Rose
- Heaven–Haven: A Nun Takes The Veil poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Sonnet LXX by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet Of Motherhood XLV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems | Poetry Monster
- Book Third [Residence at Cambridge] by William Wordsworth
- Как Снегурочка дела
- A Piece Of The Storm by Mark Strand
- Crystal Gazer by Sylvia Plath
- English Poetry. Thomas Moore. From “Irish Melodies”. 99. ’Twas One of Those Dreams. Томас Мур.
- Heredity by Tony Harrison
- Robert Burns: Ode On The Departed Regency Bill:
- Fancy
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
- For K. J., Leaving and Coming Back by Marilyn Hacker
- Exiles by Marilyn Hacker
- Desesperanto by Marilyn Hacker
- Dear Alzheimer’s by Maria Knox
- Colors Passing Through Us by Marge Piercy
- Children of My Own by Marie Starr
- Belly Good by Marge Piercy
- Baseball and Writing by Marianne Moore
- Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy
- Attack of the Squash People by Marge Piercy
- Always Unsuitable by Marge Piercy
- about emptiness… by Marina Cecilia Kohon
- A Work Of Artifice by Marge Piercy
- A Grave by Marianne Moore
- Woman by Manmohan Acharya
- Without exile, who am I? by Mahmoud Darwish
- Winter’s End by Mac McGovern
- Wind by Mac McGovern
- What these girl means to me by Maphoto selokela
- Two Stranger Birds in Our Feathers by Mahmoud Darwish
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