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:
- Sonnet I
- The Emigrant
- Владимир Степанов – Синичка в электричке
- The Prodigal Son by Rudyard Kipling
- A Cozy Little Room by Mary Etta Metcalf
- What Of The Night
- The Hut
- Thinking For Berky by William Stafford
- Impromptu, to Lady Winchelsea poem – Alexander Pope
- Sadness and Joy by William Henry Davies
- All through eternity by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- The Night poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Resignation by Thomas Chatterton
- Robert Burns: Epigram On Mr. James Gracie:
- The Wheel Routs by William Barnes
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
- Sonnet CXXX: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet CXXX by William Shakespeare
- Winter by William Shakespeare
- When to the sessions of sweet silent thought (Sonnet 30) by William Shakespeare
- When that I was and a little tiny boy by William Shakespeare
- When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes (Sonnet 29) by William Shakespeare
- Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare
- Under the Greenwood Tree by William Shakespeare
- Three Songs by William Shakespeare
- The Quality of Mercy by William Shakespeare
- The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare
- Spring in New Hampshire by William Shakespeare
- Sonnets CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet LXXI by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet LXX by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet LXVII by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet LXVI by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet LXV by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet LXIX by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet LXIV: When I Have Seen by Time’s Fell Hand Defac’d by William Shakespeare
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