“La patience est amère; mais le fruit en est doux!”
I
Away down into the shadowy depths of the Real I once lived.
I thought that to seem was to be.
But the waters of Marah were beautiful, yet they were bitter.
I waited, and hoped, and prayed;
Counting the heart-throbs and the tears that answered them.
Through my earnest pleadings for the True, I learned that the mildest mercy of life was a smiling sneer;
And that the business of the world was to lash with vengeance all who dared to be what their God had made them.
Smother back tears to the red blood of the heart!
Crush out things called souls!
No room for them here!
II
Now I gloss my pale face with laughter, and sail my voice on with the tide.
Decked in jewels and lace, I laugh beneath the gas-light’s glare, and quaff the purple wine.
But the minor-keyed soul is standing naked and hungry upon one of Heaven’s high hills of light.
Standing and waiting for the blood of the feast!
Starving for one poor word!
Waiting for God to launch out some beacon on the boundless shores of this Night.
Shivering for the uprising of some soft wing under which it may creep, lizard-like, to warmth and rest.
Waiting! Starving and shivering!
III
Still I trim my white bosom with crimson roses; for none shall see the thorns.
I bind my aching brow with a jeweled crown, that none shall see the iron one beneath.
My silver-sandaled feet keep impatient time to the music, because I cannot be calm.
I laugh at earth’s passion-fever of Love; yet I know that God is near to the soul on the hill, and hears the ceaseless ebb and flow of a hopeless love, through all my laughter.
But if I can cheat my heart with the old comfort, that love can be forgotten, is it not better?
After all, living is but to play a part!
The poorest worm would be a jewel-headed snake if she could!
IV
All this grandeur of glare and glitter has its night-time.
The pallid eyelids must shut out smiles and daylight.
Then I fold my cold hands, and look down at the restless rivers of a love that rushes through my life.
Unseen and unknown they tide on over black rocks and chasms of Death.
Oh, for one sweet word to bridge their terrible depths!
O jealous soul! why wilt thou crave and yearn for what thou canst not have?
And life is so long-so long.
V
With the daylight comes the business of living.
The prayers that I sent trembling up the golden thread of hope all come back to me.
I lock them close in my bosom, far under the velvet and roses of the world.
For I know that stronger than these torrents of passion is the soul that hath lifted itself up to the hill.
What care I for his careless laugh?
I do not sigh; but I know that God hears the life-blood dripping as I, too, laugh.
I would not be thought a foolish rose, that flaunts her red heart out to the sun.
Loving is not living!
VI
Yet through all this I know that night will roll back from the still, gray plain of heaven, and that my triumph shall rise sweet with the dawn!
When these mortal mists shall unclothe the world, then shall I be known as I am!
When I dare be dead and buried behind a wall of wings, then shall he know me!
When this world shall fall, like some old ghost, wrapped in the black skirts of the wind, down into the fathomless eternity of fire, then shall souls uprise!
When God shall lift the frozen seal from struggling voices, then shall we speak!
When the purple-and-gold of our inner natures shall be lighted up in the Eternity of Truth, then will love be mine!
I can wait.
A few random poems:
- Desertion by Rupert Brooke
- “When I Have Borne In Memory” by William Wordsworth
- Life Of a Broke Person by Russell James
- Robert Burns: Verses To Clarinda: Sent with a Pair of Wine-Glasses.
- Владимир Маяковский – Частушки (Милкой мне в подарок бурка…)
- Song of Medical Dick and Medical Davy by Oliver St. John Gogarty
- To a Gentleman, Who Married His Cast Mistress by William Somervile
- A Rythm Upon Our Trusts by Michael McGovern
- Sonnet LXIV: When I Have Seen by Time’s Fell Hand Defac’d by William Shakespeare
- Least In A List
- You Felons on Trial in Courts. by Walt Whitman
- Альфред де Мюссе – Как лепестки весеннего цветка
- The Lights Of New York by Sara Teasdale
- At The Cenotaph by Siegfried Sassoon
- Владимир Британишский – Урочище
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
- For K. J., Leaving and Coming Back by Marilyn Hacker
- Exiles by Marilyn Hacker
- Desesperanto by Marilyn Hacker
- Dear Alzheimer’s by Maria Knox
- Colors Passing Through Us by Marge Piercy
- Children of My Own by Marie Starr
- Belly Good by Marge Piercy
- Baseball and Writing by Marianne Moore
- Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy
- Attack of the Squash People by Marge Piercy
- Always Unsuitable by Marge Piercy
- about emptiness… by Marina Cecilia Kohon
- A Work Of Artifice by Marge Piercy
- A Grave by Marianne Moore
- Woman by Manmohan Acharya
- Without exile, who am I? by Mahmoud Darwish
- Winter’s End by Mac McGovern
- Wind by Mac McGovern
- What these girl means to me by Maphoto selokela
- Two Stranger Birds in Our Feathers by Mahmoud Darwish
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
Adah Isaacs Menken (1835 – 1868) was an American actress and a performer, who painted painter and wrote a number of poems (31 published so far). She was supposedly the highest earning actress of her time. She was best known for her performance in the hippodrama Mazeppa (with libretto based on Pushkin’s work), it is said that the climax of the spectacle featured her apparently nude and riding a horse on stage. After great success for a few years with the play in New York and San Francisco, she appeared in a production in London and Paris, from 1864 to 1866. She was a friend of Alexander Dumas. Adah Menken died in Paris at the age of 33