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:
- Яков Полонский – Ночь в Крыму
- English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. Hymn to Spiritual Desire. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.
- Rural Architecture by William Wordsworth
- The Garden by Abraham Cowley
- The Lotus by Rabindranath Tagore
- Иосиф Бродский – Буров тракторист
- As Vanquish’d Erin by Thomas Moore
- vorticism_is_a_choka_in_its_modular_home.html
- For The Future by Wendell Berry
- Иван Мятлев – Приди, приди
- Низами Гянджеви – Спать не стоит
- Михаил Ломоносов – Надпись на день рождения Ее Величества
- Tale of the Pope and of His Workman Balda
- Point Shirley by Sylvia Plath
- Николай Языков – Е. А. Свербеевой (Мысль неразгульного поэта)
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
- Night At The Marina by Shreekumar Varma
- Hymn by Sidney Godolphin
- Lord when the wise men came from farr by Sidney Godolphin
- Kumarakom (after the boat tragedy) by Shreekumar Varma
- Hymn by Sidney Godolphin
- Stir in Stillness by Shruti Talnikar
- Statistic by Shivam Pandya
- Projector by Shreekumar Varma
- Noe more unto my thoughts appeare by Sidney Godolphin
- Night At The Marina by Shreekumar Varma
- Lord when the wise men came from farr by Sidney Godolphin
- Kumarakom (after the boat tragedy) by Shreekumar Varma
- Hymn by Sidney Godolphin
- Cloris, it is not thy disdaine by Sidney Godolphin
- Night by Sidney Lanier
- My Springs by Sidney Lanier
- Martha Washington by Sidney Lanier
- Marsh Hymns by Sidney Lanier
- Laus Mariae by Sidney Lanier
- Laughter In The Senate by Sidney Lanier
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