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:
- In An Underground Dressing Station by Siegfried Sassoon
- Владимир Набоков – Как часто я в поезде скором
- Владимир Маяковский – Сплетник
- Robert Burns: A Winter Night :
- Two Campers In Cloud Country by Sylvia Plath
- Denis poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Валерий Брюсов – Голос города (Ру-ру, ру-ру, трах, рк-ру-ру)
- Address to Wm. Tytler, Esq., of Woodhouselee by Robert Burns
- “The flower, full blown, now bends the stalk, now breaks” poem – Alfred Austin
- Владимир Британишский – В годы войны
- Николай Заболоцкий – Баллада Жуковского
- An Apology for the Bottle Volcanic by Vachel Lindsay
- Book Thirteenth [Imagination And Taste, How Impaired And Restored Concluded] by William Wordsworth
- Зинаида Александрова – Чай в саду
- “When I Have Borne In Memory” by William Wordsworth
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
- Before a Midnight Breaks in Storm by Rudyard Kipling
- Beast and Man in India by Rudyard Kipling
- As the Bell Clinks by Rudyard Kipling
- Army Headquarters by Rudyard Kipling
- Arithmetic on the Frontier by Rudyard Kipling
- Anchor Song by Rudyard Kipling
- An Old Song by Rudyard Kipling
- An Imperial Rescript by Rudyard Kipling
- An Astrologer’s Song by Rudyard Kipling
- An American by Rudyard Kipling
- A Truthful Song by Rudyard Kipling
- A Tree Song by Rudyard Kipling
- A Three-Part Song by Rudyard Kipling
- A Tale of Two Cities by Rudyard Kipling
- A Song of Travel by Rudyard Kipling
- A Song of the White Men by Rudyard Kipling
- A Song of the English by Rudyard Kipling
- A Song of Kabir by Rudyard Kipling
- A Song In Storm by Rudyard Kipling
- A Song at Cock-Crow by Rudyard Kipling
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.