Nursery Rhyme For A Twenty-First Birthday
by A. S. J. Tessimond
You cannot see the walls that divide your hand
From his or hers or mine when you think you touch it.
You cannot see the walls because they are glass,
And glass is nothing until you try to pass it.
Beat on it if you like, but not too hard,
For glass will break you even while you break it.
Shout, and the sound will be broken and driven backwards,
For glass, though clear as water, is deaf as granite.
This fraudulent inhibition is cunning: wise men
Content themselves with breathing patterns on it.

A few random poems:
- Николай Огарев – Я сорвал ветку кипариса
- Before the white chrysanthemum by Yosa Buson
- The Burnt Child by W. S. Merwin
- Robert Burns: Lines Written Under The Picture Of The Celebrated Miss Burns:
- ” When in the long–drawn avenues of Thought” poem – Alfred Austin
- The Rice Was Under Water
- Woman And The Weed poem – Andrew Lang poems
- The Everlasting Monday by Sylvia Plath
- Ольга Берггольц – Ответ
- Владимир Маяковский – Приказ по армии искусства
- Days and Nights by Murali Sivaramakrishnan
- Николай Языков – Послание к А. Н. Очкину (О, ты, с которым я, от юношеских лет)
- To Captain H—–d, of the 65th Regiment by Phillis Wheatley
- Forgetting Someone by Yehuda Amichai
- Miracles by Siegfried Sassoon
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
- Considering The Snail by Thom Gunn
- Broken Love by Talha Jafri
- Black Market Love by Taisha Destin
- Attention please! Attention please! by Roald Dahl
- An Act of Faith by Talha Jafri
- After Years by Ted Kooser
- Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower by Taha Muhammad Ali
- A Ghost in the Shell by Talha Jafri
- 10 Things I Do Every Day by Ted Berrigan
- Zermatt To The Matterhorn. by Thomas Hardy
- A Woman’s Fancy by Thomas Hardy
- The Woman In The Rye by Thomas Hardy
- A Week by Thomas Hardy
- The Year’s Awakening by Thomas Hardy
- The Workbox by Thomas Hardy
- The Wistful Lady by Thomas Hardy
- The Puzzled Game-Birds by Thomas Hardy
- A Spot by Thomas Hardy
- A Sign-Seeker by Thomas Hardy
- “The Curtains Now Are Drawn” by Thomas Hardy
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