A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)
When the ice starts to shiver
all across the reflecting basin
or water-lily leaves
dissect a simple surface
the word ‘drowning’ flows through me.
You built a glassy floor
that held me
as I leaned to fish for old
hooks and toothed tin cans,
stems lashing out like ties of
silk dressing-gowns
archangels of lake-light
gripped in mud.
Now you hand me a torn letter.
On my knees, in the ashes, I could never
fit these ripped-up flakes together.
In the taxi I am still piecing
what syllables I can
translating at top speed like a thinking machine
that types out ‘useless’ as ‘monster’
and ‘history’ as ‘lampshade’.
Crossing the bridge I need all my nerve
to trust to the man-made cables.
The blades on that machine
could cut you to ribbons
but its function is humane.
Is this all I can say of these
delicate books, scythe-curved intentions
you and I handle? I’d rather
taste blood, yours or mine, flowing
from a sudden slash, than cut all day
with blunt scissors on dotted lines
like the teacher told.
A few random poems:
- Олег Бундур – Справились с делами
- The Messiah : A Sacred Eclogue poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Forever
- Prologue to Rodin in Rime poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- An Expostulation to Lord King by Thomas Moore
- My Father’s Hats by Mark Irwin
- The Twins poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- A Song at Cock-Crow by Rudyard Kipling
- To Sir George Howland Beaumont, Bart From the South-West Coast Or Cumberland 1811 by William Wordsworth
- L’Après-Midi D’un Faune poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Paradise Lost: Book 06 poem – John Milton poems
- Gentlmen-Rankers by Rudyard Kipling
- Владимир Высоцкий – Живу я в лучшем из миров
- Impromptu on Carron Iron Works by Robert Burns
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
- Content Written Off Ithica poem – Alfred Austin
- Chi È? poem – Alfred Austin
- By The Fates poem – Alfred Austin
- Burns’s Statue At Irvine poem – Alfred Austin
- “Beyond the pasture’s withered bents ” poem – Alfred Austin
- Before, Behind, And Beyond poem – Alfred Austin
- “Because I failed, shall I asperse the End” poem – Alfred Austin
- At Vaucluse poem – Alfred Austin
- At The Lattice poem – Alfred Austin
- At The Gate Of The Convent poem – Alfred Austin
- At Shelley’s House At Lerici poem – Alfred Austin
- At Shelley’s Grave poem – Alfred Austin
- At San Giovanni Del Lago poem – Alfred Austin
- A Woman’s Apology poem – Alfred Austin
- A Wintry Picture poem – Alfred Austin
- A Wintry Picture (II) poem – Alfred Austin
- A Wild Rose poem – Alfred Austin
- A Voice From The West poem – Alfred Austin
- A Twilight Song poem – Alfred Austin
- A Tusculan Question poem – Alfred Austin
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
Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012) was an American poet, essayist, and feminist.