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:
- Николай Заболоцкий – Шакалы
- Robert Burns: O Wat Ye Wha’s In Yon Town:
- Long Long Ago by Robert Desnos
- Валерий Брюсов – Голубое, голубое
- The Wish
- Bees A-Zwarmen by William Barnes
- Security by William Stafford
- The Kiss — English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- A New Song by Thomas Chatterton
- days of quiet by Raj Arumugam
- The Travelling Bear poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Broken Love by Talha Jafri
- The Ballad of the Red Earl by Rudyard Kipling
- Омар Хайям – Когда к жизни Любовь меня в мир призвала
- The True Lover poem – A. E. Housman
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
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: 121. Sad Hesper o’er the buried sun poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: 11. Calm is the morn without a sound poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: 118. Contemplate all this work of Tim poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: 105. To-night ungather’d let us leave poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- In Memoriam 82: I Wage Not Any Feud With Death poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- In Memoriam 3: O Sorrow, Cruel Fellowship poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- In Memoriam 16: I envy not in any moods poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- In Memoriam 131: O Living Will That Shalt Endure poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur (excerpt) poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Idylls of the King: The Marriage of Geraint poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Idylls of the King: The Last Tournament (excerpt) poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Idylls Of The King: Song From The Marriage Of Geraint poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- How Thought You That This Thing Could Captivate? poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Hendecasyllabics poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Guinevere poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Gareth And Lynette poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Fatima | Best Love Poems
- Enoch Arden poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Duet poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
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.