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:
- Владимир Высоцкий – Надпись на афише Смехову к 400-му спектаклю «Антимиры»
- Владимир Гиппиус – Иначе, как стихами, говорить
- The Ever-Patient Woman poem – Andree Chedid poems | Poems and Poetry
- I Just Wanna Be Your Valentine by Miraj Patel
- Upper Lambourne poem – John Betjeman poems
- Омар Хайям – Мой друг, о завтрашнем заботиться не след
- Владимир Маяковский – Версаль
- An Essay on Man: Epistle II poem – Alexander Pope
- Зинаида Александрова – В гости к бабушке
- Alicante Lullaby by Sylvia Plath
- Николай Языков – А. Н. Очкину (Было время, мой приятель)
- Call It Music by Philip Levine
- days of quiet by Raj Arumugam
- Олег Бундур – Переселение
- Владимир Высоцкий – Парня спасём, парня в детдом
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
- Hear the Voice by William Blake
- Introduction to the Songs of Innocence by William Blake
- French Revolution, The (excerpt) by William Blake
- I Saw a Chapel by William Blake
- I Heard an Angel by William Blake
- Broken Love by William Blake
- Eternity by William Blake
- Holy Thursday (Innocence) by William Blake
- Ah! Sun-Flower by William Blake
- A Cradle Song by William Blake
- Earth’s Answer by William Blake
- A Dream by William Blake
- Infant Joy by William Blake
- Evening Star by William Blake
- Auguries Of Innocence by William Blake
- And Did Those Feet In Ancient Time by William Blake
- Infant Sorrow by William Blake
- If It Is True What the Prophets Write by William Blake
- How Sweet I Roam’d by William Blake
- Holy Thursday (Experience) by William Blake
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