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:
- Ingrateful Beauty Threatened by Thomas Carew
- Unsung Hands by Satish Verma
- Sunset And Sunrise (Translated From Owen) by William Cowper
- Memorials of A Tour In Scotland, 1803 I. Departure From The Vale Of Grasmere, August 1803 by William Wordsworth
- Sonnet CIX by William Shakespeare
- Tom May’s Death poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- Юнна Мориц – Приход вдохновения
- John Kinsella’s Lament For Mrs. Mary Moore by William Butler Yeats
- Алексей Николаевич Толстой – Лель
- Новелла Матвеева – Я, говорит, не воин
- In shadows of night
- Need by Robert Lloyd Jaffe
- let’s love the lawn by Raj Arumugam
- A Complaint by William Wordsworth
- In a Vale by Robert Frost
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
- The Defiance Of Eteocles
- The Decree Of Athena
- The Complaint Of Prometheus
- The Beacon Fires
- The Battle Of Salamis
- Song Of The Furies
- Prometheus Amid Hurricane And Earthquake
- Prayer Artemis
- Lament Two Brothers Slain Each Other039s Hand
- Lament For The Two Brothers Slain By Each Others Hand
- Fragment From Aeschylus
- Complaint Prometheus
- Battle Salamis
- A Prayer For Artemis
- On Twitter
- Victory
- Valediction Forbidding Mourning
- Two Songs
- Stepping Backward
- Snapshots Of A Daughter In Law By Adrienne Rich
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.