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:
- Bad News by William Barnes
- Night At The Marina by Shreekumar Varma
- Epigram on a Country Laird (Cardoness) by Robert Burns
- A Tombless Epitaph by Samuel Coleridge
- Carrion Comfort poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Николай Глазков – Движутся телеги и калеки
- Summer poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- To G.A.W. poem – John Keats poems
- Владимир Маяковский – Наврут полный короб… (Главполитпросвет №68)
- Владимир Маяковский – Шумики, шумы и шумищи
- The Idle Shepherd Boys by William Wordsworth
- Forlorn, my love, no comfort here (Song) by Robert Burns
- On The Benefit Received By His Majesty From Sea-Bathing, In The Year 1789 by William Cowper
- Альфред де Мюссе – Печаль
- On Fair Compassion by Nithin Purple
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
- Fleeting Thoughts by Mac McGovern
- Father And Son by Mac McGovern
- Eco en la madrugada by Mara Romero Torres
- Down in the valley by Marcin Malek
- Diary of a Palestinian Wound by Mahmoud Darwish
- Childhood by Margaret Walker
- As He Walks Away by Mahmoud Darwish
- An Interchanging Poetry Expression Of Love by Mac McGovern
- AN INSPIRATIONAL VILLANELLE: by Manish Thakur
- An Honest Poet’s Life Is Full Of Care by Malcolm Massiah
- Al calor de una guitarra by Mara Romero Torres
- Ahmad Al-Za’tar by Mahmoud Darwish
- A Noun Sentence by Mahmoud Darwish
- A Lover From Palestine by Mahmoud Darwish
- Your choice by Mrunmayi Mandan
- Yin and Yang by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- Worry by Mridula Makkuni
- Twiddle-de-dee by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- The Wedding Night by Mukeshkumar Raval
- The Storm by Muralidharan Mudaliar
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.