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:
- Gus: The Theatre Cat by T. S. Eliot
- Низами Гянджеви – Коль мы на весах любви
- I had a little nut-tree, by Roald Dahl
- Аля Кудряшева – Не бойся, милый
- The Explanation by Rudyard Kipling
- The Song of the Cheerful (but slightly sarcastic) Jesus by Oliver St. John Gogarty
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Мысль
- Grandmother’s Teaching poem – Alfred Austin
- Николай Карамзин – Тацит
- A Padlock for the Mouth by William Somervile
- Fortune poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- The Last Bargain by Rabindranath Tagore
- 600 Kilos of Muscle and Bone by Rose Mary Boehm
- This Living Hand poem – John Keats poems
- Vaishnavi Prakash by Vaishnavi Prakash
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
- The Beginning by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Astronomer by Rabindranath Tagore
- Religious Obsession — translation from Dharmamoha by Rabindranath Tagore
- Poems On Time by Rabindranath Tagore
- Poems On Man by Rabindranath Tagore
- Poems On Love by Rabindranath Tagore
- Poems On Life by Rabindranath Tagore
- Poems On Beauty by Rabindranath Tagore
- One Day In Spring…. by Rabindranath Tagore
- On The Nature Of Love by Rabindranath Tagore
- My Friend, Come In These Rains — English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts LVI: The Evening Was Lonely by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lord Of My Life by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lamp Of Love by Rabindranath Tagore
- Kinu Goala’s Alley – English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- In The Dusky Path Of A Dream by Rabindranath Tagore
- In The Country – English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- I Found A Few Old Letters by Rabindranath Tagore
- I Cast My Net Into The Sea by Rabindranath Tagore
- Gift Of The Great – English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
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.