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:
- 1991-II by Wendell Berry
- Hint From The Mountains For Certain Political Pretenders by William Wordsworth
- Sobbing of The Bells, The. by Walt Whitman
- Владимир Корнилов – Прямота
- Handy Man by Shel Silverstein
- Black Cat by Rainer Maria Rilke
- On the Birth of a Posthumous Child by Robert Burns
- Love In Reverse by Talha Jafri
- First Verse
- Don’t Need Anything by Pat Mullan
- Olney Hymn 55: The Heart Healed And Changed By Mercy by William Cowper
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – На поле Ватерло
- The Ordination by Robert Burns
- This Compost. by Walt Whitman
- Come, My Beloved, Hear From Me by Robert Louis Stevenson
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
- Rain After a Vaudeville Show by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Portrait of a Boy by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Portrait of a Baby by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Poor Devil! by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Nos Immortales by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Music by Stephen Vincent Benet
- May Morning by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Love in Twilight by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Lonely Burial by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Going Back to School by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Ghosts of a Lunatic Asylum by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Elegy for an Enemy by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Dinner in a Quick Lunch Room by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Dedication by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Colors by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Before an Examination by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Alexander VI Dines with the Cardinal of Capua by Stephen Vincent Benet
- A Minor Poet by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Grammar Lesson by Steve Kowit
- The Convoy by Stephenie Tucker
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.