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:
- Gleaners Of Fame poem – Alfred Austin
- Spelt From Sibyl’s Leaves poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Thoughts Religious Content
- Love Sonnet LIV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems | Poetry Monster
- Couplet 10 poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Factory Windows are Always Broken by Vachel Lindsay
- Batty by Shel Silverstein
- Владимир Костров – Видение на озере
- Surreal landscapes by Sunil Sharma
- Brooklyn Narcissus by Paul Blackburn
- Swift’s Epitaph by William Butler Yeats
- Robert Burns: The Bonie Lad That’s Far Awa:
- A Leaf for Hand in Hand. by Walt Whitman
- Robert Burns: Epigram At Brownhill Inn:
- Fish in the Unruffled Lakes by W H Auden
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
- Conversation Among The Ruins by Sylvia Plath
- Circus In Three Rings by Sylvia Plath
- Child’s Park Stones by Sylvia Plath
- “Célibataire” by Sylvia Plath
- By Candlelight by Sylvia Plath
- Burning The Letters by Sylvia Plath
- Bluebeard by Sylvia Plath
- Blackberrying by Sylvia Plath
- Black Rook In Rainy Weather by Sylvia Plath
- Black Pine Tree In An Orange Light by Sylvia Plath
- Battle-Scene From the Comic Operatic Fantasy The Seafarer by Sylvia Plath
- Balloons by Sylvia Plath
- Ariel by Sylvia Plath
- Apprehensions by Sylvia Plath
- An Appearance by Sylvia Plath
- Amnesiac by Sylvia Plath
- All The Dead Dears by Sylvia Plath
- Aftermath by Sylvia Plath
- Admonition by Sylvia Plath
- Above The Oxbow by Sylvia Plath
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.