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:
- Joker of the Pack by Shekhar Srinivasan
- In Jerusalem by Mahmoud Darwish
- The Exeter Road poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Verdad Innegable by Victoria Luisa Mora Paoli
- Валерий Брюсов – Город сестер любви видение
- Virgule by Thomas Lux
- Николай Огарев – Смутные мгновенья
- A Poet039s Privilege
- The Chinese Nightingale by Vachel Lindsay
- Стефан Малларме – Устав от горького бездействия и лени
- Владимир Британишский – Автопортрет Давида
- In Honour Of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- C’est la nuit aveugle by Martine Morillon-Carreau
- We know this much by Sappho
- “Because I failed, shall I asperse the End” poem – Alfred Austin
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 Brave and the Love Flute by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Walls at Drogheda by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- The Death of Knowledge by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- The Brave and the Love Flute by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Walls at Drogheda by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- The Death of Knowledge by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- The Brave and the Love Flute by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Be Not a War Poet by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Why the Young Men Are So Ugly by Tony Hoagland
- V by Tony Harrison
- Turns by Tony Harrison
- The Change by Tony Hoagland
- Special Problems in Vocabulary by Tony Hoagland
- Requests for Toy Piano by Tony Hoagland
- Reasons to Survive November by Tony Hoagland
- Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet by Tony Hoagland
- Quiet by Tony Hoagland
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