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:
- Self-Portrait poem – Andrei Voznesensky poems
- Юнна Мориц – Свежий бублик
- Robert Burns: The Lass O’ Ballochmyle:
- The Essay on Agriculture by Abraham Cowley
- Владимир Британишский – Быт
- You Can Have It by Philip Levine
- Astrophel And Stella-First Song by Sir Philip Sidney
- The Balloon Of The Mind by William Butler Yeats
- Иннокентий Анненский – Еврипид. Геракл (перевод)
- Владимир Высоцкий – Надо с кем-то рассорить кого-то
- Rhyming Reply to a Note from Captain Riddell by Robert Burns
- Atavism by William Stafford
- A Zong Of Harvest Hwome by William Barnes
- Silet poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Question mark remarks by Mark Miller
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
- The Tame Bird Was In A Cage by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Sun Of The First Day by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Portrait — English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Music Of The Rains – English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Merchant by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Lost Star — English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Last Bargain by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Kiss by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Kiss — English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Home by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Hero — English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Golden Boat by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener XXVII: Trust Love by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener XXVI: What Comes From Your Willing Hands by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener XXIX: Speak To Me My Love by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener XI: Come As You Are by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LXXIX: I Often Wonder by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LVII: I Plucked Your Flower by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Gardener LV: It Was Mid-Day by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Call Of The Far — English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
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