A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)
The autumn feels slowed down,
summer still holds on here, even the light
seems to last longer than it should
or maybe I’m using it to the thin edge.
The moon rolls in the air. I didn’t want this child.
You’re the only one I’ve told.
I want a child maybe, someday, but not now.
Otto has a calm, complacent way
of following me with his eyes, as if to say
Soon you’ll have your hands full!
And yes, I will; this child will be mine
not his, the failures, if I fail
will all be mine. We’re not good, Clara,
at learning to prevent these things,
and once we have a child it is ours.
But lately I feel beyond Otto or anyone.
I know now the kind of work I have to do.
It takes such energy! I have the feeling I’m
moving somewhere, patiently, impatiently,
in my loneliness. I’m looking everywhere in nature
for new forms, old forms in new places,
the planes of an antique mouth, let’s say, among the leaves.
I know and do not know
what I am searching for.
Remember those months in the studio together,
you up to your strong forearms in wet clay,
I trying to make something of the strange impressions
assailing me–the Japanese
flowers and birds on silk, the drunks
sheltering in the Louvre, that river-light,
those faces…Did we know exactly
why we were there? Paris unnerved you,
you found it too much, yet you went on
with your work…and later we met there again,
both married then, and I thought you and Rilke
both seemed unnerved. I felt a kind of joylessness
between you. Of course he and I
have had our difficulties. Maybe I was jealous
of him, to begin with, taking you from me,
maybe I married Otto to fill up
my loneliness for you.
Rainer, of course, knows more than Otto knows,
he believes in women. But he feeds on us,
like all of them. His whole life, his art
is protected by women. Which of us could say that?
Which of us, Clara, hasn’t had to take that leap
out beyond our being women
to save our work? or is it to save ourselves?
Marriage is lonelier than solitude.
Do you know: I was dreaming I had died
giving birth to the child.
I couldn’t paint or speak or even move.
My child–I think–survived me. But what was funny
in the dream was, Rainer had written my requiem–
a long, beautiful poem, and calling me his friend.
I was your friend
but in the dream you didn’t say a word.
In the dream his poem was like a letter
to someone who has no right
to be there but must be treated gently, like a guest
who comes on the wrong day. Clara, why don’t I dream of you?
That photo of the two of us–I have it still,
you and I looking hard into each other
and my painting behind us. How we used to work
side by side! And how I’ve worked since then
trying to create according to our plan
that we’d bring, against all odds, our full power
to every subject. Hold back nothing
because we were women. Clara, our strength still lies
in the things we used to talk about:
how life and death take one another’s hands,
the struggle for truth, our old pledge against guilt.
And now I feel dawn and the coming day.
I love waking in my studio, seeing my pictures
come alive in the light. Sometimes I feel
it is myself that kicks inside me,
myself I must give suck to, love…
I wish we could have done this for each other
all our lives, but we can’t…
They say a pregnant woman
dreams her own death. But life and death
take one another’s hands. Clara, I feel so full
of work, the life I see ahead, and love
for you, who of all people
however badly I say this
will hear all I say and cannot say.
A few random poems:
- Жан де Лафонтен – Совет Мышей
- I’ve dreamt of dreaming ’bout you by Vinko Kalinić
- Олег Бундур – Когда я вернусь
- Babul poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Владимир Маяковский – Власть канцелярии – вот слова “бюрократия” перевод… (РОСТА №655)
- was_then.html
- St. Winefred’s Well poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Do You Remember Once
- Вера Павлова – Толстые икры правителей
- Выхожу один я на дорогу – Лермонтов: Стихотворение, читать текст стиха Михаила Лермонтова – Poetry Monster
- Гавриил Державин – На храм при Гапсале
- Robert Burns: A Man’s A Man For A’ That:
- Sonnet CXI: O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide by William Shakespeare
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: 11. Calm is the morn without a sound poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Returned To Say by William Stafford
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
- Why England Is Conservative poem – Alfred Austin
- Who Would Not Die For England! poem – Alfred Austin
- “When the reaper lays the sickle by ” poem – Alfred Austin
- When Runnels Began To Leap And Sing poem – Alfred Austin
- ” When in the long–drawn avenues of Thought” poem – Alfred Austin
- “What ails you, Ocean, that nor near nor far” poem – Alfred Austin
- “`Were I a Poet, I would dwell” poem – Alfred Austin
- Since We Must Die poem – Alfred Austin
- Wardens Of The Wave poem – Alfred Austin
- To The Autumn Wind poem – Alfred Austin
- To Robert Louis Stevenson poem – Alfred Austin
- To Ireland poem – Alfred Austin
- To England poem – Alfred Austin
- To Ellen Terry poem – Alfred Austin
- To Beatrice Stuart–Wortley Ætat poem – Alfred Austin
- To Arms! poem – Alfred Austin
- To Arms! (II) poem – Alfred Austin
- To Alfred Tennyson poem – Alfred Austin
- “‘Tis because, though in dusky bower” poem – Alfred Austin
- Time’s Weariness poem – Alfred Austin
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.