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:
- Source of Life – Gives Hope in Adversity?
- Robert Burns: I Love My Love In Secret:
- Human Instrument by Victoria Bukofske
- Яков Полонский – На Женевском озере
- Владимир Высоцкий – Дорожная история
- Scots Prologue for Mr. Sutherland by Robert Burns
- Human Tendency
- The Discovery of the Kama Sutra by Raj Arumugam
- Владимир Высоцкий – Мой Гамлет
- Владимир Маяковский – Посмотрим сами, покажем им
- Life and Love by Nithin Purple
- Николай Гумилев – Живала Ниагара
- The Arrivals by Sharon Olds
- Федор Сологуб – Лесная тропа
- Little Fugue by Sylvia Plath
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
- The Beginning by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Astronomer by Rabindranath Tagore
- Religious Obsession — translation from Dharmamoha by Rabindranath Tagore
- Poems On Time by Rabindranath Tagore
- Poems On Man by Rabindranath Tagore
- Poems On Love by Rabindranath Tagore
- Poems On Life by Rabindranath Tagore
- Poems On Beauty by Rabindranath Tagore
- One Day In Spring…. by Rabindranath Tagore
- On The Nature Of Love by Rabindranath Tagore
- My Friend, Come In These Rains — English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts LVI: The Evening Was Lonely by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lord Of My Life by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lamp Of Love by Rabindranath Tagore
- Kinu Goala’s Alley – English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- In The Dusky Path Of A Dream by Rabindranath Tagore
- In The Country – English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- I Found A Few Old Letters by Rabindranath Tagore
- I Cast My Net Into The Sea by Rabindranath Tagore
- Gift Of The Great – English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
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.