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:
- Gratitude To The Unknown Instructors by William Butler Yeats
- Before you go a little way prospecting by T. Wignesan
- Василий Жуковский – К князю Вяземскому
- Ольга Берггольц – В доме Павлова
- Владимир Маяковский – Даешь материальную базу
- The Promise of the Morning Star poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Dreams Beauty
- Яков Полонский – Поцелуй
- Limbo Under the Westway poem – André Rostant poems
- To a foil’d European Revolutionaire. by Walt Whitman
- Infelix
- Absence poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Не касайся моих чертежей
- Linda Deäne by William Barnes
- On the Death of a Young Gentleman by Phillis Wheatley
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
- In spring and summer winds may blow by Walter Savage Landor
- Death Stands Above Me, Whispering Low by Walter Savage Landor
- Proud Word You Never Spoke by Walter Savage Landor
- God Scatters Beauty by Walter Savage Landor
- Remain! by Walter Savage Landor
- I Strove with None by Walter Savage Landor
- Absence by Walter Savage Landor
- Dirce by Walter Savage Landor
- Autumn by Walter Savage Landor
- On His Seventy-fifth Birthday by Walter Savage Landor
- On His Eightieth Birthday by Walter Savage Landor
- Lately our poets by Walter Savage Landor
- Ianthe’s Question by Walter Savage Landor
- F?sulan Idyl by Walter Savage Landor
- Finis by Walter Savage Landor
- Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher by Walter Savage Landor
- Alciphron and Leucippe by Walter Savage Landor
- Acon and Rhodope by Walter Savage Landor
- Morning Poem #59 by Wanda Phipps
- Morning Poem #43 by Wanda Phipps
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