A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)
Far back when I went zig-zagging
through tamarack pastures
you were my genius, you
my cast-iron Viking, my helmed
lion-heart king in prison.
Years later now you’re young
my fierce half-brother, staring
down from that simplified west
your breast open, your belt dragged down
by an oldfashioned thing, a sword
the last bravado you won’t give over
though it weighs you down as you stride
and the stars in it are dim
and maybe have stopped burning.
But you burn, and I know it;
as I throw back my head to take you in
and old transfusion happens again:
divine astronomy is nothing to it.
Indoors I bruise and blunder
break faith, leave ill enough
alone, a dead child born in the dark.
Night cracks up over the chimney,
pieces of time, frozen geodes
come showering down in the grate.
A man reaches behind my eyes
and finds them empty
a woman’s head turns away
from my head in the mirror
children are dying my death
and eating crumbs of my life.
Pity is not your forte.
Calmly you ache up there
pinned aloft in your crow’s nest,
my speechless pirate!
You take it all for granted
and when I look you back
it’s with a starlike eye
shooting its cold and egotistical spear
where it can do least damage.
Breath deep! No hurt, no pardon
out here in the cold with you
you with your back to the wall.
A few random poems:
- Владимир Маяковский – Сказка про купцову нацию, мужика и кооперацию
- Galahad, Knight Who Perished by Vachel Lindsay
- Владимир Высоцкий – Охота на кабанов
- The Village Garden poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Владимир Маяковский – С винтовкой, но без знания – нет побед (РОСТА № 115)
- The Sleepers by Walt Whitman
- Mujer Libanesa I poem – Amir Ibn Tawfik poems | Poems and Poetry
- Untitled XXV by Yunus Emre
- Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath
- Гавриил Державин – Анакреон у печки
- An Immorality poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Paragraphs from a Day-Book by Marilyn Hacker
- Владимир Высоцкий – Песня Лягушонка
- Sonnet CXX by William Shakespeare
- boy_running_in_the_rain.html
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 most noble bird, wife by Mukeshkumar Raval
- The Morning Breeze by Mousumi Guha Roy
- The ME inside by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- The Labour by Mousumi Guha Roy
- The Drum-Stick Tree by Murali Sivaramakrishnan
- the branches of pine tree by Mousumi Guha Roy
- The Beyond by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- Sting by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- Snake Pit by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- Six-Word Poem by Monty Gilmer
- Rain all along by Mukeshkumar Raval
- Poem by Murali Sivaramakrishnan
- Poem by Murali Sivaramakrishnan
- Parody on a Haiku by Issa by Monty Gilmer
- No Regrets by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- My Mother by Claude McKay
- My impure god and I by Murali Sivaramakrishnan
- My Dear Old Mother by Walter William Safar
- Mother by Shahida Latif
- Lost and Found by Muralidharan Mudaliar
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.