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:
- Love Has Nothing to Do with the Five Senses by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Нина Воронель – Маме
- Pain by Thomas Edward Brown
- Holding On by Philip Levine
- Владимир Высоцкий – Вратарь (Льву Яшину)
- The Key Role of Creativity in Advertising
- Юрий Верховский – Как раненый олень кидается в поток
- Жан де Лафонтен – Война Крыс и Ласок
- Alexander by Walter de la Mare
- Sonnet (XII) : O Buddha ! I do wish to follow your golden middle path by Neelam Sinha
- Old Ladies’ Home by Sylvia Plath
- Олег Григорьев – Зажав кузнечика в руке
- Looks A-Know’d Avore by William Barnes
- God Scatters Beauty by Walter Savage Landor
- Владимир Высоцкий – Песня лётчика
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
- Merging, Emerging by Shahida Latif
- Men by Maya Angelou
- Little Clock by T. Wignesan
- Let me Count the Poets Left by Michael K. Shiu
- Last Turn Of The Morning Carousel/Forever Turn The Midnight Carousel by Matthew Abuelo
- kaleidoscopic whorled wide web. by matthew scott harris
- Kailangan ko’y Yakap by Melissa Sazon Flores
- It Asked a Crumb of Me by Michael K. Shiu
- Insomniac by Maya Angelou
- initial mother’s day eve by matthew scott harris
- In the Park by Maxine Kumin
- Illusion by Mercedes Madrigal
- I Know From my Bed by Michael Lee Johnson
- Humankind – How Limitless In Genius by Michael Levy
- How Am I? by Matt Bohart
- Haunted by you by Melissa Skelton
- Forced by Mayank Sharma
- Forbidden Fruit by Michael Lally
- Follies of War by Michael Levy
- Eve- Song by Mary Gilmore
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.