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:
- Ольга Берггольц – Февральский дневник
- Robert Burns: Lines To Mr. John Kennedy:
- Юнна Мориц – В серебряном столбе
- Гавриил Державин – Философы, пьяный и трезвый
- Жан де Лафонтен – Два Мула
- Robert Burns: Talk Of Him That’s Far Awa:
- Olney Hymn 26: On Opening A Place For Social Prayer by William Cowper
- Misery And Splendor by Robert Hass
- Robert Burns: The Braes O’ Killiecrankie:
- Ouija by Sylvia Plath
- Extempore on some commemorations of Thomson by Robert Burns
- Autumn Fires by Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Narrative by Talha Jafri
- Олег Бундур – Вместо нас
- A Passing Glimpse by Robert Frost
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
- Year O’ year by Nikunj Sharma
- The Woman From The Archive by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Where we fall by Osman cisse Hanif
- When the Walls Were White by Noele Martin
- When I live with fancy’ by Nithin Purple
- When Trust Fails… by Olaniyi Beloved Abimbola
- The Weavers by Nijole Miliauskaite
- The Weaver by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Vagina Envy by Nin Andrews
- Untitled #13 by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Untitled #12 by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Untitled #11 by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Untitled #10 by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Untitled #1 by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Two sparrows and my heart by Nizar Sartawi
- Turtledove of the Green Land – Dedicated to Tunisian poet, Huda Hajji by Nizar Sartawi
- To Spirituality by Nithin Purple
- To Melancholy- Written On An intensely agitated Day by Nithin Purple
- To Imagination by Nithin Purple
- To Her Beauty by Nithin Purple
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.