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:
- The Habit Of Perfection poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Grandmother’s Teaching poem – Alfred Austin
- Алексей Плещеев – Молчание
- Ballade Of Old Plays poem – Andrew Lang poems
- At The Lattice poem – Alfred Austin
- Let Him Free by Mary Etta Metcalf
- To His Watch poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Rape of the Lock: Canto 3 poem – Alexander Pope
- After Parting by Sara Teasdale
- This by Ralph Angel
- Lynching
- Sonet 54 by William Alexander
- In An Underground Dressing Station by Siegfried Sassoon
- Attadale, West Highlands by William Ernest Henley
- The Grammar Lesson by Steve Kowit
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
- The Princess And The Goblins by Sylvia Plath
- The Other by Sylvia Plath
- The Other Two by Sylvia Plath
- The Night Dances by Sylvia Plath
- The Net-Menders by Sylvia Plath
- The Munich Mannequins by Sylvia Plath
- The Moon And The Yew Tree by Sylvia Plath
- The Manor Garden by Sylvia Plath
- The Lady And The Earthenware Head by Sylvia Plath
- The Jailer by Sylvia Plath
- The Hermit At Outermost House by Sylvia Plath
- The Hanging Man by Sylvia Plath
- The Great Carbuncle by Sylvia Plath
- The Goring by Sylvia Plath
- The Glutton by Sylvia Plath
- The Ghost’s Leavetaking by Sylvia Plath
- The Fearful by Sylvia Plath
- The Eye-Mote by Sylvia Plath
- The Everlasting Monday by Sylvia Plath
- The Dream by Sylvia Plath
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