A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)
Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750-1848),
astronomer, sister of William; and others.
A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them
a woman ‘in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles’
in her 98 years to discover
8 comets
She whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses
Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled
in those spaces of the mind
An eye,
‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’
from the mad webs of Uranusborg
encountering the NOVA
every impulse of light exploding
from the core
as life flies out of us
Tycho whispering at last
‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’
What we see, we see
and seeing is changing
the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive
Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body
The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus
I am bombarded yet I stand
I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.
A few random poems:
- Юлиан Анисимов – Весенний дождь
- Ольга Берггольц – Осень (Мне осень озёрного края)
- To His Dead Body by Siegfried Sassoon
- Владимир Маяковский – Бруклинский мост
- Dying Love!!! by Praveen Parasar
- Robert Burns: Bannocks O’ Bear Meal:
- Ireland With Emily poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Before This Little Gift Was Come by Robert Louis Stevenson
- November, 1806 by William Wordsworth
- Николай Языков – Родина
- John Barleycorn by Robert Burns
- Change of Climate by Michael S Wilson
- WATER LILLIES AND ADVICE by PEGGY AYLSWORTH
- Holy Communion
- To Emily Dickinson by Yvor Winters
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
- A Farewell To Youth poem – Alfred Austin
- A Dream Of England poem – Alfred Austin
- A Dialogue At Fiesole poem – Alfred Austin
- A Defence Of English Spring poem – Alfred Austin
- A Country Nosegay poem – Alfred Austin
- A Christmas Carol poem – Alfred Austin
- A Captive Throstle poem – Alfred Austin
- A Border Burn poem – Alfred Austin
- A Birthday Present poem – Alfred Austin
- You Smile Upon Your Friend To-Day poem – A. E. Housman
- White in the Moon the Long Road Lies poem – A. E. Housman
- When the Lad for Longing Sigh poem – A. E. Housman
- When the Lad for Longing Sigh poem – A. E. Housman
- When Smoke Stood Up From Ludlow poem – A. E. Housman
- When Smoke Stood Up From Ludlow poem – A. E. Housman
- When I Watch the Living Meet poem – Alfred Edward Housman
- When I Watch the Living Meet poem – Alfred Edward Housman
- When I Came Last to Ludlow poem – A. E. Housman
- When I Came Last to Ludlow poem – A. E. Housman
- Westward on the High-Hilled Plains poem – A. E. Housman
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

Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012) was an American poet, essayist, and feminist.