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:
- Sometimes by Vinko Kalinić
- Владислав Ходасевич – Обо всем в одних стихах не скажешь
- Яков Полонский – Письмо
- Orlando Furioso canto 13 by Ludovico Ariosto
- The World is with Me by Thomas Hood
- Davideis A Sacred Poem Of The Troubles Of David Excerpt
- A Life Story
- Among the Multitude. by Walt Whitman
- Tobias Smollett – Tobias Smollett
- Анатолий Жигулин – Иду в полях
- Robert Burns: My Love, She’s But A Lassie Yet:
- A Dream Of Death by William Butler Yeats
- Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen by William Shakespeare
- Как хорошо иметь подругу
- Николай Заболоцкий – Городок
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
- Arms and the Man by Siegfried Sassoon
- Arcady Unheeding by Siegfried Sassoon
- Ancient History by Siegfried Sassoon
- Ancestors by Siegfried Sassoon
- An Old French Poet by Siegfried Sassoon
- Alone by Siegfried Sassoon
- Aftermath by Siegfried Sassoon
- Absolution by Siegfried Sassoon
- A Working Party by Siegfried Sassoon
- A Whispered Tale by Siegfried Sassoon
- A Wanderer by Siegfried Sassoon
- A Subaltern by Siegfried Sassoon
- A Poplar and the Moon by Siegfried Sassoon
- A Mystic As Soldier by Siegfried Sassoon
- A Letter Home by Siegfried Sassoon
- A Child’s Prayer by Siegfried Sassoon
- Night Launch by Sonya Ki Tomlinson
- Long For This World by Sophie Hannah
- LIGHT ECHOES by Sonya Ki Tomlinson
- Life Brings Me to this Journey. by Stephen Sweitzer
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
