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:
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Средь бега дней моих порой
- Beautiful Balmerino by William Topaz McGonagall
- Carrion Comfort poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Perfect Wave by Shel Silverstein
- Zero by Robert Creeley
- Dyer Died In Silence poem – Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sonnet Iii
- Virgule by Thomas Lux
- In The Bus That Is Frantically Rushing From Cairo To Port Said
- Psalm Three by Mahmoud Darwish
- Of Clementina by Walter Savage Landor
- Why?
- SOVEREIGNTY by Satish Verma
- Robert Burns: O Let Me In Thes Ae Night:
- It Is March by W. S. Merwin
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
- Il Penseroso poem – John Milton poems
- Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity poem – John Milton poems
- How Soon Hath Time poem – John Milton poems
- From ‘Samson Agonistes’ i poem – John Milton poems
- From ‘Arcades’ poem – John Milton poems
- Comus poem – John Milton poems
- At A Vacation Exercise In The Colledge, Part Latin, Part English. The Latin Speeches Ended, The English Thus Began poem – John Milton poems
- At A Solemn Musick poem – John Milton poems
- Arcades poem – John Milton poems
- Another On The Same poem – John Milton poems
- An Epitaph On The Marchioness Of Winchester poem – John Milton poems
- An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet W. Shakespeare poem – John Milton poems
- Winter Seascape poem – John Betjeman poems
- Winter Landscape poem – John Betjeman poems
- Westgate-On-Sea poem – John Betjeman poems
- Verses Turned… poem – John Betjeman poems
- Upper Lambourne poem – John Betjeman poems
- Trebetherick poem – John Betjeman poems
- The Plantster’s Vision poem – John Betjeman poems
- The Olympic Girl poem – John Betjeman poems
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