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:
- Harry Ploughman poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Kraj Majales (King Of May) poem – Allen Ginsberg
- John Milton As Author of Pornographic Verse: An Extempore Upon a Faggot
- When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d. by Walt Whitman
- Владимир Маяковский – Не юбилейте
- Олег Бундур – Вид с задней парты
- Ancient Music poem – Ezra Pound poems
- South Wind by Siegfried Sassoon
- Николай Гумилев – Любовь весной
- From the morrow poem – Yamabe no Akahito poems | Poetry Monster
- Николай Огарев – Выпьем, что ли, Ваня
- The Princess (prologue) poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Алексей Жемчужников – Умные политики
- Василий Кубанёв – 12 июля
- He is more than a hero by Sappho
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
- To an Early Daffodil poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- To a Friend poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Thompson’s Lunch Room – Grand Central Station poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Way poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Trout poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Tree of Scarlet Berries poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Temple poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Taxi poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Shadow poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Road to Avignon poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Red Lacquer Music-Stand poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Promise of the Morning Star poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Precinct. Rochester poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Pleiades poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Pike poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Paper Windmill poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Fruit Garden Path poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Forsaken poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Foreigner poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Fool Errant poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
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.