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:
- Lighting one candle by Yosa Buson
- Николай Карамзин – Часто здесь в юдоли мрачной
- Ок Мельникова – Если есть от кого ждать писем
- At Applewaite, Near Keswick 1804 by William Wordsworth
- Question mark remarks by Mark Miller
- A Cross-Road Epitaph poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Books poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Moonrise poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Николай Гумилев – Он воздвигнул свой храм на горе
- The Woman From The Archive by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Владимир Бенедиктов – На пятидесятилетний юбилей Крылова
- Юрий Левитанский – Не брести мне сушею
- For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid by William Stafford
- Live Inspired With Famous Inspiring Quotes
- once i saw a old man’s shop by tulip
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
- At the Party by W H Auden
- Old People’s Home by W H Auden
- O What Is That Sound by W H Auden
- O Tell Me The Truth About Love by W H Auden
- Nocturne by W H Auden
- A New Age by W H Auden
- Like A Vocation by W H Auden
- Let A Florid Music Praise by W H Auden
- Law, Like Love by W H Auden
- At Last the Secret is Out by W H Auden
- Lady Weeping at the Crossroads by W H Auden
- It’s No Use Raising A Shout by W H Auden
- In the Time of War, XII by W H Auden
- In Praise Of Limestone by W H Auden
- Here War Is Simple by W H Auden
- Give me a doctor by W H Auden
- from The Cave of Making by W H Auden
- from In Time of War by W H Auden
- Friday’s Child by W H Auden
- Friday’s Child by W H Auden
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