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:
- Come Skating by Shel Silverstein
- Calidore: A Fragment poem – John Keats poems
- Илья Эренбург – Я слышу всё, и горестные шепоты
- Стефан Малларме – Записка Уистлеру
- Long-Legged Fly by William Butler Yeats
- Ольга Берггольц – Озерный край
- May 19th – the Young Pioneers Day
- Messalina poem – Alfred Austin
- Robert Burns: Lines Written Under The Picture Of The Celebrated Miss Burns:
- Epistle to Mrs. Scott of Wauchope House by Robert Burns
- Эмиль Верхарн – Вперед
- A Sea-Shore Grave. To M. J. L. by Sidney Lanier
- Ballade Of Queen Anne poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Friendship poem – Alexander Pushkin
- An Imitation of Spenser by William Blake
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
- At the Party by W H Auden
- Old People’s Home by W H Auden
- O What Is That Sound by W H Auden
- O Tell Me The Truth About Love by W H Auden
- Nocturne by W H Auden
- A New Age by W H Auden
- Like A Vocation by W H Auden
- Let A Florid Music Praise by W H Auden
- Law, Like Love by W H Auden
- At Last the Secret is Out by W H Auden
- Lady Weeping at the Crossroads by W H Auden
- It’s No Use Raising A Shout by W H Auden
- In the Time of War, XII by W H Auden
- In Praise Of Limestone by W H Auden
- Here War Is Simple by W H Auden
- Give me a doctor by W H Auden
- from The Cave of Making by W H Auden
- from In Time of War by W H Auden
- Friday’s Child by W H Auden
- Friday’s Child by W H Auden
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.