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:
- A HYMN TO BACCHUS by Robert Herrick
- Валерий Брюсов – Пифия
- I Saw His Round Mouth’s Crimson by Wilfred Owen
- Sadness and Joy by William Henry Davies
- honeycomb.html
- Dawlish poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- In Memory Of Alfred Pollexfen by William Butler Yeats
- Ghazal to Pera Belle by Serkan Engin
- Sonnet # 2 by Luis A. Estable
- I Just Wanna Be Your Number One by Miraj Patel
- The Last Laugh poem – John Betjeman poems
- Breadfruit by Philip Larkin
- Шекспир – Чтобы стихи, рожденные когда-то – Сонет 38
- Аля Кудряшева – Снова current
- Morpheus poem – Alexander Pushkin
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
- Awed by her splendor by Sappho
- To Aphrodite by Sappho
- And their feet move by Sappho
- Anactoria by Sappho
- An Epithalamium by Sappho
- Although they are by Sappho
- In Adoration by Sappho
- A Lament For Adonis by Sappho
- A Hymn To Venus by Sappho
- Youth And The Pilgrim by Sara Teasdale
- Triolets by Sara Teasdale
- To L. R. E. by Sara Teasdale
- To A Picture Of Eleanor Duse by Sara Teasdale
- To A Castillan Song by Sara Teasdale
- Since There Is No Escape by Sara Teasdale
- The Wine by Sara Teasdale
- The Wind by Sara Teasdale
- The Wind In The Hemlock by Sara Teasdale
- The Wayfarer by Sara Teasdale
- The Wanderer by Sara Teasdale
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.