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 Lyric to Mirth by Robert Herrick
- The Rao Of Ilore
- Владимир Высоцкий – Хрущёву
- To The Rev. Mr. Newton : An Invitation Into The Country by William Cowper
- A Performance At Hog Theater by Russell Edson
- Yaddo : The Grand Manor by Sylvia Plath
- Repression of War Experience by Siegfried Sassoon
- Written In A Quarrel by William Cowper
- Иван Варавва – Соловей на веточке
- Галина Гампер – Забываю я все
- Thrushes by Ted Hughes
- Frozen Heart 2
- Олег Бундур – Сложный предмет
- Владимир Высоцкий – У нас вчера с позавчера
- Robert Burns: The Gard’ner Wi’ His Paidle:
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
- I am the earthworm, Lord of the Underworld by Raj Arumugam
- I am content here by Raj Arumugam
- How I saved Planet Earth by Raj Arumugam
- how far are you? by Raj Arumugam
- how did poetry begin? by Raj Arumugam
- Hey birds by Raj Arumugam
- Head of a Smiling Young Woman in Three-Quarter View by Raj Arumugam
- gum tree loved by the sky by Raj Arumugam
- good bye, my sweet angel by Raj Arumugam
- four legs good, two legs badOwl Hoots and Grasshopper Sings by Raj Arumugam
- four legs good, two legs bad by Raj Arumugam
- five moons for earth by Raj Arumugam
- Female ghost in the moonlight by Raj Arumugam
- emotional bond by Raj Arumugam
- doughnuts for sale by Raj Arumugam
- different lovers by Raj Arumugam
- did you die, Ophelia? by Raj Arumugam
- dear owl, forlorn like King Lear by Raj Arumugam
- dear moon, you will understand by Raj Arumugam
- days of quiet by Raj Arumugam
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