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:
- Victory
- Presentiment poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- Let It Be Forgotten by Sara Teasdale
- Upon The Hill And Grove At Bill-borow poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- Black Stone On Top Of Nothing by Philip Levine
- God Cut the Cord by Raj Napal
- Владимир Корнилов – Пишущая машинка
- The Amaranth by Vachel Lindsay
- Blighters by Siegfried Sassoon
- Омар Хайям – Долго ль спину придется мне гнуть или нет
- Lines On The Mermaid Tavern poem – John Keats poems
- Владимир Вишневский – Заявка на романс
- Desire # 4 by Patricia Fargnoli
- On Observing Some Names Of Little Note Recorded In The Biographia Britannica by William Cowper
- Shimmering by Satish Verma
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
- Ольга Седакова – Луг, юго-западный ветер
- Ольга Седакова – Липа
- Ольга Седакова – Легенда шестая
- Ольга Седакова – Кот, бабочка, свеча
- Ольга Седакова – Когда говорю я: помилуй
- Ольга Седакова – Как упавшую руку
- Ольга Седакова – Из песни Данте
- Ольга Седакова – Играющий ребенок
- Ольга Седакова – И меня удивило
- Ольга Седакова – Госпожа и служанка
- Ольга Седакова – Где-нибудь в углу запущенной болезни
- Ольга Седакова – Филемон и Бавкида
- Ольга Седакова – Элегия смоковницы
- Ольга Седакова – Элегия осенней воды
- Ольга Седакова – Две книги я несу
- Ольга Седакова – Дикий шиповник
- Ольга Седакова – Деревья, сильный ветер
- Ольга Седакова – Давид поет Саулу
- Ольга Седакова – Цивилизация
- Ольга Седакова – Болезнь
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