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:
- Paris In Spring by Sara Teasdale
- Inscription For A Stone Erected At The Sowing Of A Grove Of Oaks At Chillington, Anno 1790 by William Cowper
- Circus In Three Rings by Sylvia Plath
- Old Boy poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- Robert Burns: Epitaph On John Dove, Innkeeper:
- Shot? So Quick, So Clean an Ending? poem – A. E. Housman
- Владимир Корнилов – Яблоки
- Back-View by William Ernest Henley
- The Twa Sisters poem – Andrew Lang poems
- On Going Unnoticed by Robert Frost
- Ольга Ермолаева – Ты где летал, мой падающий с Фанских гор
- The Little Boy And The Old Man by Shel Silverstein
- At San Giovanni Del Lago poem – Alfred Austin
- Erin! The Tear and the Smile in Thine Eyes by Thomas Moore
- I am Ireland by Patrick Pearse
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
- From The Frontier Of Writing by Seamus Heaney
- Follower by Seamus Heaney
- Exposure by Seamus Heaney
- Docker by Seamus Heaney
- Death Of A Naturalist by Seamus Heaney
- Casualty by Seamus Heaney
- Bogland by Seamus Heaney
- Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney
- Act of Union by Seamus Heaney
- Winters!!! by Aditya Kumar
- The Lent Lily by A. E. Housman
- Winters!!! by Aditya Kumar
- On the Idle Hill of Summer by A. E. Housman
- The Lent Lily by A. E. Housman
- On the Idle Hill of Summer by A. E. Housman
- Broken wings of a Heart by Saajida Gora
- Being Underwater by Sahiti Siddharth
- Awake by Sara Herlihy
- Attitude: Don Juan in the Shopping Mall by S. K. Kelen
- Aspirations by SAAJIDA GORA
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.