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:
- Silence by Riju Dave
- Гавриил Державин – Анакреон у печки
- The Melancholy of Birth
- Christopher Okigbo – Looking Back at His Short-lived Life and Taking Stock of His Poetic Legacy
- Олег Сердобольский – Играли в шахматы слоны
- Федор Сваровский – Пришельцы убили всех
- A Letter to a Live Poet by Rupert Brooke
- Deftly, Admiral, Cast Your Fly by W H Auden
- In shadows of night
- What General has a Good Army. by Walt Whitman
- Аля Кудряшева – Тишина
- Вера Звягинцева – Пойдёте пешком на кладбище
- Two Years Later by William Butler Yeats
- Epistle to Mrs. Scott of Wauchope House by Robert Burns
- Ольга Берггольц – Старая гвардия
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
- A Poet by Thomas Hardy
- A Meeting With Despair by Thomas Hardy
- A Man (In Memory of H. of M.) by Thomas Hardy
- A King’s Soliloquy [On the Night of His Funeral] by Thomas Hardy
- In A Wood by Thomas Hardy
- “I Sometimes Think” by Thomas Hardy
- A Death-Day Recalled by Thomas Hardy
- A Conversation At Dawn by Thomas Hardy
- A Confession To A Friend In Trouble by Thomas Hardy
- A Commonplace Day by Thomas Hardy
- A Circular by Thomas Hardy
- A Christmas Ghost Story by Thomas Hardy
- Amabel by Thomas Hardy
- Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave? by Thomas Hardy
- After The Visit by Thomas Hardy
- After Schiller by Thomas Hardy
- After A Journey by Thomas Hardy
- Additions: The Fire at Tranter Sweatley’s by Thomas Hardy
- “According to the Mighty Working” by Thomas Hardy
- A Wife In London 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