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:
- Константин Бальмонт – Если грустно тебе
- Владимир Степанов – Кот
- A Question by Robert Frost
- Владимир Высоцкий – Веселая покойницкая
- Олег Сердобольский – Футболист
- A Curse for Kings by Vachel Lindsay
- Robert Burns: Epistle To The Rev. John M’math: Inclosing A Copy Of “Holy Willie’s Prayer,” Which He Had Requested
- Words Unspoken by Mark Olynyk
- Владимир Маяковский – Почему нет помощи от Румынии (Главполитпросвет №327)
- From Afar by Rabindranath Tagore
- Омар Хайям – Будут гурии, мед и вино
- Ode To Apollo poem – John Keats poems
- Николай Карамзин – К самому себе
- Шекспир – Любовь – не кукла жалкая в руках – Сонет 116
- Reading by William Marr
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
- Ballade Made In The Hot Weather by William Ernest Henley
- Back-View by William Ernest Henley
- Attadale, West Highlands by William Ernest Henley
- Arabian Night’s Entertainments by William Ernest Henley
- Apparition by William Ernest Henley
- Anterotics by William Ernest Henley
- Andante Con Moto by William Ernest Henley
- Allegro Maestoso by William Ernest Henley
- After by William Ernest Henley
- A Wink From Hesper by William Ernest Henley
- A Desolate Shore by William Ernest Henley
- A Child by William Ernest Henley
- A Bowl Of Roses by William Ernest Henley
- The Swamp Fox by William Gilmore Simms
- The Lost Pleiad by William Gilmore Simms
- The Decay Of A People by William Gilmore Simms
- The Bard by William Gilmore Simms
- The Angel Of The Church by William Gilmore Simms
- Sumter In Ruins by William Gilmore Simms
- Song In March by William Gilmore Simms
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.