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:
- Closure by Suchi Gaur
- The Gardener LV: It Was Mid-Day by Rabindranath Tagore
- Black Stone On Top Of Nothing by Philip Levine
- Ode, Sacred to the Memory of Mrs. Oswald of Auchencruive by Robert Burns
- At Grass by Philip Larkin
- Sonnet 41: Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits by William Shakespeare
- Miss Brown by Samuel Stephen Wakdok
- Sonnet 32: If thou survive my well-contented day by William Shakespeare
- Epitaph on “Wee Johnnie” by Robert Burns
- Topiary poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Optimist poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Silent Muse poem – Alfred Austin
- I love you by Inganathi Ntantiso
- Валерий Брюсов – К Армении
- Surface Rights
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
- Recollection
- Practising The Anthem
- Practising Anthem
- Peace
- On Australian Hills
- Mirage
- Memoriam
- Mates
- Lord Nevils Advice
- Lord Nevil039s Advice
- Looking In The Fire
- Looking Fire
- Learn
- Last Battle Cid
- Influence
- Individuality
- In Memoriam
- Honour
- Home Sick
- Holy Communion
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.