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:
- Face To Face by Rabindranath Tagore
- Ring Out Your Bells by Sir Philip Sidney
- Оливер Голдсмит – Подношение
- Ольга Берггольц – Я иду по местам боев
- Низами Гянджеви – Спустилась ночь
- Tiger Drinking at Forest Pool by Ruth Padel
- A Song of Peach-Blossom River by Wang Wei
- Lead Soldiers poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Nami Danam… poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Girl-Gladness poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Someone left a pen… poem – Yuyutsu Sharma poems | Poetry Monster
- Orpheus with his Lute Made Trees by William Shakespeare
- Exposure by Wilfred Owen
- On Moonlit Heath and Lonesome Bank poem – A. E. Housman
- White in the Moon the Long Road Lies poem – A. E. Housman
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 First Sam Hazo at the Last by Samuel Hazo
- The Cleaving by Samuel Hazo
- Carol of a Father by Samuel Hazo
- To A Young Lady. On Her Recovery From A Fever by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Written In Early Youth. The Time,–An Autumnal Evening by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- The Lime-tree Bower my Prison by Samuel Coleridge
- Psyche by Samuel Coleridge
- Brockley Coomb by Samuel Coleridge
- As some vast Tropic tree, itself a wood (fragment) by Samuel Coleridge
- Constancy To An Ideal Object by Samuel Coleridge
- A Tombless Epitaph by Samuel Coleridge
- Cologne by Samuel Coleridge
- Duty Surviving Self-Love by Samuel Coleridge
- Epitaph by Samuel Coleridge
- Dejection: An Ode by Samuel Coleridge
- About The Nightingale by Samuel Coleridge
- Fears In Solitude by Samuel Coleridge
- Christabel by Samuel Coleridge
- Epigram by Samuel Coleridge
- Phantom by Samuel Coleridge
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.