A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)
Living in the earth-deposits of our history
Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.
Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.
A few random poems:
- Gazing at the Sacred Peak by Tu Fu
- The Emotion Line by Rita Odessa Villaruel
- Robert Bruce’s March to Bannockburn (Song) by Robert Burns
- Robert Burns: Bonie Peggy Alison:
- Europe, the 72d and 73d years of These States. by Walt Whitman
- X: Some Verses: To His Most Affectionate Friend Mr. Lithgow by William Alexander
- Михаил Кузмин – В густом лесу мы дождь пережидали
- Нина Воронель – Ломбардная баллада
- Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days by Ted Hughes
- For the Lute by William Somervile
- Эмиль Верхарн – Я радость бытия принес тебе в подарок
- Lyonesse
- Song II: Have No Thought for Tomorrow by William Morris
- Underneath an Abject Willow by W H Auden
- Grandmother’s Teaching poem – Alfred Austin
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 Old Maids Story
- The Night
- The Mob
- The Midnight Mass
- The Magic Wand
- The Legend Of Lady Gertrude
- The Last Battle Of The Cid
- The Kind Word
- The Hands That Hang Down
- The Hand In The Dark
- The Future Verdict
- The Easter Decorations
- The Dawn
- The Dawn Of Gods Sabbath
- The Crown Of Thorns
- The Coo Of The Cushat
- The Candle Of The Lord
- The Baptistry
- Sic Vos Non Vobis
- Seed Time And Harvest
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

Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012) was an American poet, essayist, and feminist.