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:
- Стефан Малларме – Звенящий зимний день
- Feeling Lucky to Be Irish
- A Little Memory poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Altar amid the sea by Vinko Kalinic
- Last night my soul cried O exalted sphere of Heaven by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Hymn Light
- A Prayer On Going Into My House by William Butler Yeats
- The Bankrupt Peace-Maker by Vachel Lindsay
- From: The Home We Will Never Live In That Place by Nijole Miliauskaite
- After Parting by Sara Teasdale
- Adieu to a Soldier by Walt Whitman
- The Paint-Kings by Washington Allston
- A Rajput Love Song by Sarojini Naidu
- The Rape of the Lock: Canto 5 poem – Alexander Pope
- Олег Бундур – Сон
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
- Paris In Spring by Sara Teasdale
- Over The Roofs by Sara Teasdale
- Only In Sleep by Sara Teasdale
- On The Dunes by Sara Teasdale
- On The Death Of Swinburne by Sara Teasdale
- Oh Day Of Fire And Sun by Sara Teasdale
- Night Song At Amalfi by Sara Teasdale
- Night In Arizona by Sara Teasdale
- New Year’s Dawn – Broadway by Sara Teasdale
- Madeira From The Sea by Sara Teasdale
- Love In Autumn by Sara Teasdale
- Less Than The Cloud To The Wind by Sara Teasdale
- Interlude: Songs Out Of Sorrow by Sara Teasdale
- In The Train by Sara Teasdale
- In The Metropolitan Museum by Sara Teasdale
- In The End by Sara Teasdale
- Night Song At Amalfi by Sara Teasdale
- In the Carpenter’s Shop by Sara Teasdale
- Night In Arizona by Sara Teasdale
- In Spring, Santa Barbara by Sara Teasdale
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.