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:
- Time’s Defence poem – Alfred Austin
- Hora Cero by Manolo Arriola
- Gigolo by Sylvia Plath
- Other by Robert Creeley
- The Statesmen poem – by Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- Conversation With My Heart by Russ Pergram
- On Looking Up By Chance At The Constellations by Robert Frost
- Letter To A Purist by Sylvia Plath
- Валерий Брюсов – К Пасифае. Сонет
- The Long Hill by Sara Teasdale
- Astrophel and Stella: I by Sir Philip Sidney
- Tiger
- A Dream by Robert Burns
- Владимир Маяковский – В РСФСР 130 миллионов населения (Агитплакаты)
- Василий Жуковский – Из альбома, подаренного Ростопчиной (Пушкин)
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
- Ten Years After by Graham Rowlands
- Telescopes In The Square by Graham Rowlands
- South Africa by Ronald G. Auguste
- Shattered Dreams. Broken Promises. by Russell James
- Savour Your Life by Ronald G. Auguste
- Rosslyn To The Prime Minister by Graham Rowlands
- Writing to Onegin by Ruth Padel
- Icicles round a Tree in Dumfriesshire by Ruth Padel
- Conqueror by Russell Hughes Ragsdale
- Conversation 4: On Place by Rosmarie Waldrop
- To A Young Lady. On Her Recovery From A Fever by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Written In Early Youth. The Time,–An Autumnal Evening by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Fire, Famine, And Slaughter : A War Eclogue by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Fancy In Nubibus, Or The Poet In The Clouds by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Epitaph On An Infant. by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- What would I do without this world by Samuel Beckett
- Cascando by Samuel Beckett
- To a Commencement of Scoundrels by Samuel Hazo
- The Nearness That Is All by Samuel Hazo
- The Middle of the World by Samuel Hazo
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.