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:
- Tu Fu – Tu Fu
- A Stepmother’s Vain Love by Vaishnavi Prakash
- power-of-thought.html
- silence.html
- Алексей Николаевич Толстой – Осеннее золото
- Низами Гянджеви – Если б радость не лучилась
- The Manor Garden by Sylvia Plath
- Farewell (II) by Wang Wei
- Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur (excerpt) poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Amphion poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Sonnet III by William Shakespeare
- Grief by Philip Larkin
- Sonnet 06
- Владимир Луговской – Конек-горбунок
- wonder life by PALLAVI SINGH
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
- Total Recount by Pamela Griffiths
- To a Beloved Child by Patrick Pearse
- The Uses of the Eye by Paul Blackburn
- The Undeniable Pressure of Existence by Patricia Fargnoli
- The Triumph Of Achilles by Paul Celan
- The Sea and the Shadow by Paul Blackburn
- The Rising and Falling of Trees by Patricia Fargnoli
- The One Night Stand : An Approach to the Bridge by Paul Blackburn
- The Mother by Patrick Pearse
- The Choice of Trees by P.J.Reed
- The Café Filtre by Paul Blackburn
- The Blue Guitar by P. K. Page
- That Light by Paul Hostovsky
- Teenager by Patrick Connors
- Teasing by Pamela Griffiths
- Summon Me by Walid Saba
- Stony Grey Soil by Patrick Kavanagh
- Spring Thing by Paul Blackburn
- Single Traveller by P. K. Page
- Shancoduff by Patrick Kavanagh
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.