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:
- A Man Young And Old: VI. His Memories by William Butler Yeats
- Lover’s Gifts XLVIII: I Travelled the Old Road by Rabindranath Tagore
- Maudlin by Sylvia Plath
- An Ode in Time of Hesitation by William Vaughn Moody
- States! by Walt Whitman
- Наум Коржавин – Еще в мальчишеские годы
- The Heart Breaking
- Totem by Sylvia Plath
- My Soviet Passport by Vladimir Mayakovsky
- A Star in a Stoneboat by Robert Frost
- Et Le Marbre Creuse… by Martine Morillon-Carreau
- The Pact by Sharon Olds
- I Have a Fire for You in my Mouth by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Ольга Седакова – В винном отделе
- Always Unsuitable by Marge Piercy
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
- When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d. by Walt Whitman
- When I read the Book. by Walt Whitman
- When I peruse the Conquer’d Fame. by Walt Whitman
- When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer. by Walt Whitman
- When I heard at the Close of the Day. by Walt Whitman
- What think You I take my Pen in Hand? by Walt Whitman
- What Place is Besieged? by Walt Whitman
- What General has a Good Army. by Walt Whitman
- What Best I See In Thee. by Walt Whitman
- What am I, After All? by Walt Whitman
- We Two—How Long We were Fool’d. by Walt Whitman
- We Two Boys Together Clinging. by Walt Whitman
- Visor’d. by Walt Whitman
- Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field. by Walt Whitman
- Turn, O Libertad. by Walt Whitman
- To You. by Walt Whitman
- To Thee, Old Cause! by Walt Whitman
- To the Garden the World. by Walt Whitman
- To One Shortly to Die. by Walt Whitman
- To Him that was Crucified. by Walt Whitman
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