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:
- Nell Barnes by William Henry Davies
- The Wolf039s Postcript To 039little Red Riding Hood039
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Manhattan Streets I Saunter’d, Pondering. by Walt Whitman
- Belly Good by Marge Piercy
- Tempest poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Written In A Fit Of Illness. R. S. S. by William Cowper
- Paradise Regained: The Fourth Book poem – John Milton poems
- Sonnet. Written Upon The Top Of Ben Nevis poem – John Keats poems
- A Prayer poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Алексей Плещеев – Знакомые звуки, чудесные звуки
- At Algeciras; A Meditaton Upon Death by William Butler Yeats
- The Gardener XX: Day After Day He Comes by Rabindranath Tagore
- Владимир Маяковский – Буржуй, прощайся с приятными деньками
- Владимир Высоцкий – Мистерия хиппи
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
- Summer poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Suggested by the Cover of a Volume of Keats’s poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Stupidity poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Stravinsky’s Three Pieces poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Storm-Racked poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Spring Day poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Song poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sea Shell poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sea Shell poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sancta Maria, Succurre Miseris poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sancta Maria, Succurre Miseris poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Roads poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Roads poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Red Slippers poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Reaping poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Petals poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Patterns poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Patience poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Patience poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- On Carpaccio’s Picture: The Dream of St. Ursula poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
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.