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:
- Song poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- XIV: Some Verses: To Mr. Edward Allane by William Alexander
- Оливер Голдсмит – Эпитафия Неду Пардону
- Macer : A Character poem – Alexander Pope
- Федор Сологуб – Золушка
- Authorship by Rabindranath Tagore
- Full Moon and Little Frieda by Ted Hughes
- Absence poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sher Afzul
- All in June by William Henry Davies
- Song At Capri by Sara Teasdale
- Hobbinol; or The Rural Games by William Somervile
- Федор Сологуб – Зачем, скажи
- Poem65
- Towards Understanding, Through Poetry
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
- Нина Воронель – Гаданье
- Нина Воронель – Дождливый рассвет
- Нина Воронель – Дан приказ
- Нина Воронель – Чтоб спастись от проклятого невезенья
- Нина Воронель – Бывает, что вещи меня ненавидят
- Нина Воронель – Бабий стих
- Нина Воронель – Август
- Нина Воронель – Аэродром
- Нина Веселова – Жена
- Нина Стожкова – Подарки деда Мороза
- Нина Пикулева – Яна-Несмеяна
- Нина Пикулева – Ой, да чья ж это девчушка
- Нина Пикулева – Читайте, дети
- Нина Найденова – Наши игрушки
- Нина Гаген-Торн – Возвращение
- Нина Гаген-Торн – Тихо пальцы опускаю
- Нина Гаген-Торн – На свете есть много мук
- Нина Гаген-Торн – Колыма
- Нина Гаген-Торн – День мой в труде тяжелом
- Нина Гаген-Торн – Барак ночью
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.