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:
- “Avaunt All Specious Pliancy Of Mind” by William Wordsworth
- Philomela by Sir Philip Sidney
- The Truce of the Bear by Rudyard Kipling
- Омар Хайям – Если гурия страстно целует в уста
- Another Way Of Love by Robert Browning
- I Call Your Name In My Heart by Samuel Stephen Wakdok
- Memory As a Hearing Aid by Tony Hoagland
- Pace of Life by Pierre Reverdy
- The Aquittal Of Phryne poem – Alfred Austin
- Robert Burns: A Grace Before Dinner, Extempore:
- einstein-defining-special-relativity.html
- Ольга Берггольц – О, где ты запела
- In Abeyance by Satish Verma
- We put the urn aboard ship by Sappho
- Anticipation poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and 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
- Аля Кудряшева – Если ты, к примеру, кролик с шелковистыми ушами
- Аля Кудряшева – Двадцать перышек за плечами
- Аля Кудряшева – Дождь напевает, искрясь по зарослям
- Алишер Навои – Уже белеет голова
- Алишер Навои – Украсишь ты свой наряд красным
- Алишер Навои – У пери — точка вместо уст
- Алишер Навои – То не заросли тюльпанов
- Алишер Навои – Сверкнула в темноте ночной краса
- Алишер Навои – Стихотворные жемчужины
- Алишер Навои – Соловей, лишенный розы, умолкает, не поет
- Алишер Навои – Словно зеркало, сияет лик твой
- Алишер Навои – Скиталец горький, страсть таю я
- Алишер Навои – Сердце взял мое сын мага
- Алишер Навои – Сердце кровью из ран обагрить я сумел
- Алишер Навои – Пустословя на минбаре
- Алишер Навои – Птицу-сердце полонила нежных локонов силком
- Алишер Навои – Поучительные заветы старости
- Алишер Навои – Осрамился я
- Алишер Навои – Он любить мне запрещает
- Алишер Навои – О таинствах любви
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.