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:
- Edgar Allan Poe by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- Dreaming of Li Po by Tu Fu
- Иван Киуру – Кот и жук
- Epitaph On A Free But Tame Redbreast, A Favourite Of Miss Sally Hurdis by William Cowper
- Нина Воронель – Маме
- Bituminous? by Shel Silverstein
- The Beginning of the End by Rixa White
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Ель и берёза
- June by William Cullen Bryant
- Long I waited in vain
- The Unchanging by Sara Teasdale
- “`Know, Nature, like the cuckoo, laughs at law” poem – Alfred Austin
- Яков Полонский – Блажен озлобленный поэт
- Miracles by Paul Hostovsky
- Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight by Vachel Lindsay
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
- A Prayer For Old Age by William Butler Yeats
- A Prayer For My Son by William Butler Yeats
- A Nativity by William Butler Yeats
- A Memory Of Youth by William Butler Yeats
- A Meditation In Time Of War by William Butler Yeats
- A Man Young And Old: X. His Wildness by William Butler Yeats
- A Man Young And Old: VIII. Summer And Spring by William Butler Yeats
- A Man Young And Old: VII. The Friends Of His Youth by William Butler Yeats
- A Man Young And Old: VI. His Memories by William Butler Yeats
- A Man Young And Old: V. The Empty Cup by William Butler Yeats
- A Man Young And Old: IX. The Secrets Of The Old by William Butler Yeats
- A Man Young And Old: IV. The Death Of The Hare by William Butler Yeats
- A Man Young And Old: III. The Mermaid by William Butler Yeats
- A Man Young And Old: II. Human Dignity by William Butler Yeats
- A Man Young And Old: I. First Love by William Butler Yeats
- A Last Confession by William Butler Yeats
- A Friend’s Illness by William Butler Yeats
- A First Confession by William Butler Yeats
- A Faery Song by William Butler Yeats
- A Drunken Man’s Praise Of Sobriety by William Butler Yeats
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