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:
- The Rowing Song by Roald Dahl
- Михаил Кузмин – Живется нам не плохо
- The Perfect Marriage by Vachel Lindsay
- Valley-dawn by Sunil Sharma
- Robert Burns: Epigram On Miss Davies: On being asked why she had been formed so little, and Mrs. A-so big.
- It Will Not Change by Sara Teasdale
- Vo’k A-Comèn Into Church by William Barnes
- God’s Grandeur poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Низами Гянджеви – Ты рукой мне сжала сердце
- Eyes Look Into The Well by W H Auden
- What We Leave Behind by Robert Saltzman
- November by Walter de la Mare
- Hudibras and Milton Reconciled by William Somervile
- Life of Ms Anonymous by Raj Arumugam
- The Stones by Sylvia Plath
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 New Year’s Resolution to Leave Dundee by William Topaz McGonagall
- A Humble Heroine by William Topaz McGonagall
- A Descriptive Poem on the Silvery Tay by William Topaz McGonagall
- A Christmas Carol by William Topaz McGonagall
- On The Porch At The Frost Place, Franconia, N. H. by William Matthews
- On the Nativity of Christ by William Dunbar
- On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines by William Vaughn Moody
- Ode to My Guitar by William Wright Harris
- No Return by William Matthews
- Mingus At The Showplace by William Matthews
- Memory by William Browne
- Lament for the Makers by William Dunbar
- Job Interview by William Matthews
- In Honour of the City of London by William Dunbar
- Homer’s Seeing-Eye Dog by William Matthews
- Gloucester Moods by William Vaughn Moody
- Earliest Spring by William Dean Howells
- Composed Upon Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth
- Britannia’s Pastorals by William Browne
- Between the Dusk of a Summer Night by William Ernest Henley
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