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:
- Геннадий Айги – ЧИТАЯ НОРВИДА
- Низами Гянджеви – Где путь в кумирню
- With Ships the Sea was Sprinkled Far and Nigh by William Wordsworth
- Dining-Room Tea by Rupert Brooke
- Федор Сологуб – Я часть загадки разгадал
- Низами Гянджеви – Семь красавиц
- Happy Is England! I Could Be Content poem – John Keats poems
- Омар Хайям – Мы пешки, небо же игрок
- In My Own Shire, If I Was Sad poem – A. E. Housman
- English Poetry. Robert William Service. My Room. Роберт Уильям Сервис.
- Владимир Корнилов – Командировка на Север
- Sonnet CI by William Shakespeare
- Наум Коржавин – Люди пашут каждый раз опять
- Николай Заболоцкий – Счастливый день
- March poem – A. E. Housman
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
- V: Some Verses: To The Author Parthenius by William Alexander
- To Prince Charles by William Alexander
- To his Majestie by William Alexander
- The Sonnet, The Lady, And The Prince by William Alexander
- The Roses And The Mothers Cannot Choose by William Alexander
- Sonet 58 by William Alexander
- Sonet 57 by William Alexander
- Sonet 56 by William Alexander
- Sonet 55 by William Alexander
- Sonet 54 by William Alexander
- Sonet 53 by William Alexander
- Sonet 52 by William Alexander
- Sonet 51 by William Alexander
- Sonet 50 by William Alexander
- Sonet 5 by William Alexander
- Sonet 49 by William Alexander
- Sonet 48 by William Alexander
- Sonet 47 by William Alexander
- Sonet 44 by William Alexander
- Sonet 43 by William Alexander
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.