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:
- The Ancient Deception by Rixa White
- The Illusion of Love by Sarojini Naidu
- Stir in Stillness by Shruti Talnikar
- Шекспир – Проснись, любовь – Сонет 56
- To A Wife, On Mother’s Day by Ronald G. Auguste
- Joy and Pleasure by William Henry Davies
- A Maiden by Sara Teasdale
- Николай Гумилев – Заводи
- The Flower-Fed Buffaloes by Vachel Lindsay
- Ballades III – Of Blue China poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Альфред Теннисон – Рыцарь Галаад
- Despondency: An Ode by Robert Burns
- “By Moscow Self-Devoted To A Blaze” by William Wordsworth
- Омар Хайям – Мне с похмелья лекарство одно принеси
- Василий Тредиаковский – Мое сердце все было в страсти
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
- For K. J., Leaving and Coming Back by Marilyn Hacker
- Exiles by Marilyn Hacker
- Desesperanto by Marilyn Hacker
- Dear Alzheimer’s by Maria Knox
- Colors Passing Through Us by Marge Piercy
- Children of My Own by Marie Starr
- Belly Good by Marge Piercy
- Baseball and Writing by Marianne Moore
- Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy
- Attack of the Squash People by Marge Piercy
- Always Unsuitable by Marge Piercy
- about emptiness… by Marina Cecilia Kohon
- A Work Of Artifice by Marge Piercy
- A Grave by Marianne Moore
- Woman by Manmohan Acharya
- Without exile, who am I? by Mahmoud Darwish
- Winter’s End by Mac McGovern
- Wind by Mac McGovern
- What these girl means to me by Maphoto selokela
- Two Stranger Birds in Our Feathers by Mahmoud Darwish
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.