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:
- Transcended Land Of Love by Vaishnavi Prakash
- Rise, O Days. by Walt Whitman
- Drink of This Cup by Thomas Moore
- Conversation Galante by T. S. Eliot
- Владимир Маяковский – Проверь, товарищ, правильность факта
- To Solitude poem – John Keats poems
- In The Pass Of Killicranky by William Wordsworth
- Weak by Tanisha Avarsekar
- Multi-Miners & Co. Present Ned Kelly by Graham Rowlands
- Epitaph For Fire And Flower by Sylvia Plath
- A New Song to an Old Tune by William Ernest Henley
- The Call Of The Far — English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- Владимир Костров – Я стою, как дерево в лесу
- Coming to Terms by Mary Etta Metcalf
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
- Hand Dark
- Granny
- Future Verdict
- Easter Decorations
- Dawnlight On The Sea
- Dawn
- Dawn God039s Sabbath
- Candle Lord
- By The Camp Fire
- By A Norfolk Broad
- Baptistry
- Aunt Dorothys Lecture
- At Sea
- At Long Last
- An Old Doll
- An Anniversary
- All Saints Day 1868
- All Saints Day 1867
- After Our Likeness
- A Story At Dusk
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.