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:
- Владимир Маяковский – Что значило “празднование новогоднее”?.. (РОСТА №672)
- White Horses by Rudyard Kipling
- Алексей Жемчужников – Пауза
- Give me the Splendid, Silent Sun. by Walt Whitman
- A Sure Sign by Georgi Ladonshchikov
- She’s My Ever Lovin’ Machine by Shel Silverstein
- Кондратий Рылеев – Людмила
- Нина Воронель – Запахи детства еще не забыты
- Robert Burns: Poem On Sensibility:
- Lines Inscribed in a Lady’s Pocket Almanack by Robert Burns
- Низами Гянджеви – Не горюй, ибо друг есть
- Olney Hymn 30: The Light And Glory Of The Word by William Cowper
- Алишер Навои – О, мне бы крылья
- Wish by W. S. Merwin
- Федор Тютчев – Анненковой (D’une fille du Nord, chetive et languissante)
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
- Do You Know What It’s Like
- That devil of a man
- Because We Never Practiced With The Escape Chamber poem – Alice Fulton poems | Poetry Monster
- Aplogize
- Alone
- About Face poem – Alice Fulton poems | Poetry Monster
- To the Muse poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- Those Born In Obscure Times poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- Those Born In Obscure Times poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- The Twelve poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- The Stranger poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- The Faithless Shadows. poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- The Death of Grandfather poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- The Snowy Spring Is Raging Mad poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- The Scythians poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- Street Circus poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- The Snowy Spring Is Raging Mad poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- On the Field of Kulicovo poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- I Wait For You… poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- I Prefer the Gorgeous Freedom poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
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.