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:
- XI: Some Verses: To His Worthy Friend Master Walter Quin by William Alexander
- If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem by Yehuda Amichai
- Epitaph on a Noisy Polemic by Robert Burns
- Not Fear by Rafael Guillen
- Anticipation poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Ad Martialem by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Виктор Гончаров – Дождь
- Oh Stay At Home, My Lad poem – A. E. Housman
- May 19th – the Young Pioneers Day
- Валерий Брюсов – Газели
- Song of the Wise Children by Rudyard Kipling
- Spanish Johnny by Willa Sibert Cather
- Leszko The Bastard poem – Alfred Austin
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: 11. Calm is the morn without a sound poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- The Flight by Rudyard Kipling
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
- Groupie poem – Ysabelle Moriarty poems | Poetry Monster
- Glacier poem – Yuyutsu Sharma poems | Poetry Monster
- Ghouls parade poem – Brako Attafua poems | Poetry Monster
- Ghouls’ Parade poem – Brako Attafua poems | Poetry Monster
- Gazel poem – Yahya Kemal Beyatli poems | Poetry Monster
- Fantasy poem – Ysabelle Moriarty poems | Poetry Monster
- Drying Clothes poem – Yang Wan-Li poems | Poetry Monster
- Destiny poem – Zubair Ahmad Parray poems | Poetry Monster
- Bloodstains from Iraq poem – Yuyutsu Sharma poems | Poetry Monster
- Autumn poem – Ysabelle Moriarty poems | Poetry Monster
- Adieu poem – Yuvraj Johri poems | Poetry Monster
- About Troy poem – Zbigniew Herbert poems | Poetry Monster
- A Faery’s Lament poem – Ysabelle Moriarty poems | Poetry Monster
- A Visit to Yu’s Cave poem – Yang Wan-Li poems | Poetry Monster
- A Knocker poem – Zbigniew Herbert poems | Poetry Monster
- A Ballad That We Do Not Perish poem – Zbigniew Herbert poems | Poetry Monster
- One Night, The Fukien Robbers poem – Yang Wan-Li poems | Poetry Monster
- O My Lord, Your Dwelling Places Are Lovely poem – Yehudah ha-Levi poems | Poetry Monster
- Not Speaking Of The Way poem – Yosano Akiko poems | Poetry Monster
- My Sweet Lad You Have Not Been Lost poem – Yiannis Ritsos poems | Poetry Monster
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.