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:
- Winter039s Fall
- Владимир Маяковский – Птичка божия
- Long Odds poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Михаил Кузмин – Выздоравливающей
- Robert Burns: The Banks Of Nith:
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- Agatha
- Power of Peace by Rixa White
- Sonnet 14 poem – John Milton poems
- Reveille poem – A. E. Housman
- Ольга Берггольц – Воспоминание (И вот в лицо пахнуло земляникой)
- Олег Бундур – Полёт
- English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. Going for the Cows. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.
- Einstein Defining Special Relativity poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- Валерий Брюсов – Годы в былом
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
- My Friends by W. S. Merwin
- Language by W. S. Merwin
- It Is March by W. S. Merwin
- William Stanley Merwin – William Stanley Merwin
- Green Fields by W. S. Merwin
- For The Anniversary Of My Death by W. S. Merwin
- For A Coming Extinction by W. S. Merwin
- When I Met My Muse by William Stafford
- Waking at 3 a.m. by William Stafford
- Traveling Through The Dark by William Stafford
- Thinking For Berky by William Stafford
- The Light By The Barn by William Stafford
- Security by William Stafford
- Returned To Say by William Stafford
- Remembering Mountain Men by William Stafford
- Objector by William Stafford
- Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing by William Stafford
- Lit Instructor by William Stafford
- Just Thinking by William Stafford
- William Stafford – William Stafford
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.