by Ai
We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don’t tell me, I say. I don’t want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life
is a chain of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,
and beginning to rise heavenward
in their confirmation dresses,
like white helium balloons,
the wreathes of flowers on their heads spinning,
and above all that,
that’s where I’m floating,
and that’s what it’s like
only ten times clearer,
ten times more horrible.
Could anyone alive survive it?

A few random poems:
- Audley Court poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- A Conjuration To Electra by Robert Herrick
- Robert Burns: Inscription At Friars’ Carse Hermitage: To the Memory of Robert Riddell.
- bells_pool_and_sleep.html
- Олег Григорьев – Папа вазу опрокинул
- Юрий Верховский – Как раненый олень кидается в поток
- Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet XI. On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer poem – John Keats poems
- Memory by Siegfried Sassoon
- Владимир Маяковский – Вот о помощи голодающим отчет (Главполитпросвет №367)
- Olney Hymn 32: The Shining Light by William Cowper
- Алексей Жемчужников – Ты прав
- How Many Bards Gild The Lapses Of Time! poem – John Keats poems
- Константин Бальмонт – Если грустно тебе
- English Poetry. Robert William Service. My Room. Роберт Уильям Сервис.
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
- Sonnet 12
- Sonnet 11
- Sonnet 10
- Sonnet 08
- Sonnet 07
- Sonnet 06
- Sonnet 05
- Sonnet 04
- Sonnet 03
- Sonnet 02
- Sonnet 01
- Resurgam
- Rendezvous
- Paris
- On The Cliffs Newport
- On A Theme In The Greek Anthology
- Maktoob
- Lyonesse
- Liebestod
- La Nue
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