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:
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- Paragraphs from a Day-Book by Marilyn Hacker
- Snapshots Of A Daughter In Law By Adrienne Rich
- Constantias Song
- Владимир Маяковский – Плакаты, 1928
- I Know A Man by Yehuda Amichai
- THE WARS by Satish Verma
- Love In Reverse by Talha Jafri
- I Write a Poem by Aiyah De Torres
- A Coloured Print by Shokei poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Robert Burns: Raving Winds Around Her Blowing: I composed these verses on Miss Isabella M’Leod of Raza, alluding to her feelings on the death of her sister, and the still more melancholy death of her sister’s husband, the late Earl of Loudoun, who shot himself out of sheer heart-break at some mortifications he suffered, owing to the deranged state of his finances.-R.B., 1971.
- Sonnet CXXVIII by William Shakespeare
- Alone In The Woods by Stevie Smith
- A Lament For Adonis by Sappho
- Victims poem – Yaseen Anwer poems | Poetry Monster
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
- For Birds by Nithin Purple
- Flying Wishes by Osman cisse Hanif
- Femme Fatale by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Eye By Eye by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Evening by Olivia Lewis
- E-waste by Nisha Gopalakrishnan
- Dreamtime by Olivia Lewis
- Death Divine by Nithin Purple
- Dead Orchard by Nijole Miliauskaite
- CloSe To My Heart by Nishant Deherkar
- Children’s Taste by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Cambodian Flower by Norma Martiri
- Burnt in contemplation by Nishant Deherkar
- The Bonifratrian Hospital by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Blank by Nizar Sartawi
- Between Two Moments by Nizar Sartawi
- Between going and staying the day wavers by Octavio Paz
- Basic Overhaul by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Aquamarine Butterfly by Nina Gabriel
- An Elegy On The Glory Of Her Sex, Mrs Mary Blaize by Oliver Goldsmith
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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.