A poem by Alan Dugan
Who knows whether the sea heals or corrodes?
The wading, wintered pack-beasts of the feet
slough off, in spring, the dead rind of the shoes’
leather detention, the big toe’s yellow horn
shines with a natural polish, and the whole
person seems to profit. The opposite appears
when dead sharks wash up along the beach
for no known reason. What is more built
for winning than the swept-back teeth,
water-finished fins, and pure bad eyes
these old, efficient forms of appetite
are dressed in? Yet it looks as if the sea
digested what it wished of them with viral ease
and threw up what was left to stink and dry.
If this shows how the sea approaches life
in its propensity to feed as animal entire,
then sharks are comforts, feet are terrified,
but they vacation in the mystery and why not?
Who knows whether the sea heals or corrodes?:
what the sun burns up of it, the moon puts back.

A few random poems:
- Sonnet CXVII by William Shakespeare
- lord_god_have_mercy_on_me.html
- Стефан Малларме – Ее ногтей ожив, что ожил из пароса
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Ночной пилигрим
- Владимир Степанов – Гусь и цыплёнок
- Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood by William Cullen Bryant
- A Light Woman by Robert Browning
- On The Victory Obtained By Blake Over the Spaniards, In The Bay Of Scanctacruze, In The Island Of teneriff.1657 poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- Владимир Маяковский – Постоял здесь, мотнулся туда
- Over The Hill From The Poor-House by Will McKendree Carleton
- The Aegean by Maria Luisa Spaziani
- The springtime of Lovers has come by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Robert Burns: Sketch In Verse: Inscribed to the Right Hon. C. J. Fox.
- Bottles Of Sunshine by Vaishnavi Prakash
- Robert Burns: Bonie Dundee:
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
- Yasmini
- Yasin Khan
- Written In Cananore
- Wings
- When Love Is Over
- Verses
- Verses Faiz Ulla
- Verse By Taj Mahomed
- Vayu The Wind
- Valgovinds Song In The Spring
- Valgovinds Boat Song
- Unforgotten
- Unanswered
- Two Songs By Sitara Of Kashmir
- To The Unattainable
- To The Unattainable Lament Of Mahomed Akram
- To The Hills
- To M C N
- To Aziz Song Of Mahomed Akram
- Till I Wake
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
Alan Dugan (1923 – 2003) an American poet, a contemporary classic of American poetry.