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:
- Николай Гербель – Изюмцам
- Fickle Fortune: A Fragment by Robert Burns
- Ugliest Man In Town by Shel Silverstein
- Fast Anchor’d, Eternal, O Love. by Walt Whitman
- Carrion Comfort poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Drugs Made Pauline Vague by Stevie Smith
- Константин Бальмонт – Музыка
- Snapshots Of A Daughter In Law
- Омар Хайям – Люди тлеют в могилах, ничем становясь
- Омар Хайям – О, если б, захватив с собой стихов диван
- Last News About The Little Box by Vasko Popa
- Conversation 4: On Place by Rosmarie Waldrop
- A Cry by Sara Teasdale
- Autumnal Sonnet by William Allingham
- The Garden By The Bridge
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
- Юлия Друнина – Я ушла из детства в грязную теплушку
- Юлия Друнина – Я, признаться, сберечь не сумела шинели
- Юлия Друнина – Я порою себя ощущаю связной
- Юлия Друнина – Я не привыкла
- Юлия Друнина – Я курила недолго, давно, на войне
- Юлия Друнина – Я горожанка
- Юлия Друнина – Хорошо молодое лицо
- Юлия Друнина – Все грущу о шинели
- Юлия Друнина – Ветер с фронта
- Юлия Друнина – Верность
- Юлия Друнина – Веет чем-то родным и древним
- Юлия Друнина – В сорок пятом
- Юлия Друнина – В школе
- Юлия Друнина – В семнадцать
- Юлия Друнина – В манеже
- Юлия Друнина – В голом парке коченеют клёны
- Юлия Друнина – Убивали молодость мою
- Юлия Друнина – У моря
- Юлия Друнина – Ты рядом
- Юлия Друнина – Ты должна
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