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 Британишский – О чем размышляют
- Robert Burns: A Stanza Added In A Mason Lodge:
- A City Remembered by Vernon Scannell
- Николай Заболоцкий – Мир однолик, но двойственна природа
- On Virtue by Phillis Wheatley
- Hunger and Thirst by Muhammad Dawood Jan
- Crawling At Sea by Vaishnavi Prakash
- Robert Burns: On A Bank Of Flowers:
- Sonnet 35: No more be grieved at that which thou hast done by William Shakespeare
- old-boy.html
- Colors And Sounds
- The Nympholept
- Star-Gazers by William Wordsworth
- Denner’s Old Woman by William Cowper
- An Essay on Man in Four Epistles: Epistle 1 poem – Alexander Pope
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
- Letters to the Otherworld
- English Poetry. Katharine Tynan. A Woman Commends Her Little Son. Кэтрин Тайнен.
- English Poetry. Francis Turner Palgrave. A Churchyard in Oxfordshire. Фрэнсис Тернер Палгрев.
- English Poetry. Adam Lindsay Gordon. The Rhyme of Joyous Garde. Адам Линдсей Гордон.
- English Poetry. Mary Wortley Montagu. Epigram, 1734. Мэри Уортли Монтегю.
- English Poetry. Christina Georgina Rossetti. A Christmas Carol. Кристина Джорджина Россетти.
- English Poetry. Adam Lindsay Gordon. Bellona. Адам Линдсей Гордон.
- The Azure Sea of an alien tongue
- Happy Victory Day – May 9, 2022
- English Poetry. Rupert Chawner Brooke. The Vision of the Archangels. Руперт Брук.
- English Poetry. Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Wait. Элла Уилкокс.
- English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 29. Филип Джеймс Бэйли.
- English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 34. Филип Джеймс Бэйли.
- English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 23.1. Филип Джеймс Бэйли.
- English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 26. Филип Джеймс Бэйли.
- English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 21.1. Филип Джеймс Бэйли.
- English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 20. Филип Джеймс Бэйли.
- English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 42. Филип Джеймс Бэйли.
- English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 9. Филип Джеймс Бэйли.
- English Poetry. Philip James Bailey. Festus – 45. Филип Джеймс Бэйли.
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.