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:
- Жан де Лафонтен – Воля и Неволя
- One of the Lives by W. S. Merwin
- A Bucolic Betwixt Two; Lacon and Thyrsis by Robert Herrick
- Sonnet Xv
- Владимир Маяковский – Сплетник
- Николай Заболоцкий – Рубрук в Монголии
- She and Drugs by Mark R Slaughter
- Olney Hymn 43: Prayer For Patience by William Cowper
- Николай Глазков – Богатырское распутье
- Валерий Брюсов – К портрету К.Д. Бальмонта
- Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck (Sonnet 14) by William Shakespeare
- Владимир Маяковский – Заграничная штучка
- For A Picture Of St. Dorothea poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- In the Time of War, XII by W H Auden
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Ночью
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
- Stepping Westward by William Wordsworth
- Star-Gazers by William Wordsworth
- Stanzas by William Wordsworth
- Stanzas Written In My Pocket Copy Of Thomson’s “Castle Of Indolence” by William Wordsworth
- Spanish Guerillas by William Wordsworth
- Sonnet: On seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams weep at a tale of distress by William Wordsworth
- Sonnet: “It is not to be thought of” by William Wordsworth
- Song Of The Wandering Jew by William Wordsworth
- Song Of The Spinning Wheel by William Wordsworth
- Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle by William Wordsworth
- Simon Lee: The Old Huntsman by William Wordsworth
- Siege Of Vienna Raised By Jihn Sobieski by William Wordsworth
- She Was A Phantom Of Delight by William Wordsworth
- September, 1819 by William Wordsworth
- September 1815 by William Wordsworth
- September 1, 1802 by William Wordsworth
- Scorn Not The Sonnet by William Wordsworth
- Say, What Is Honour?–‘Tis The Finest Sense by William Wordsworth
- Ruth by William Wordsworth
- Rural Architecture by William Wordsworth
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