A poem by Alan Dugan
The skin ripples over my body like moon-wooed water,
rearing to escape me. Where could it find another
animal as naked as the one it hates to cover?
Once it told me what was happening outside,
who was attacking, who caressing, and what the air
was doing to feed or freeze me. Now I wake up
dark at night, in a textureless ocean of ignorance,
or fruit bites back and water bruises like a stone.
It’s jealousy, because I look for other tools to know
with, and other armor, better girded to my wish.
So let it lie, turn off the clues or try to leave:
sewn on me seamless like those painful shirts
the body-hating saints wore, the sheath of hell
is pierced to my darkness nonetheless: what traitors
labor in my face, what hints they smuggle through
its arching guard! But even in the night it jails,
with nothing but its lies and silences to feed upon,
the jail itself can make a scenery, sing prison songs,
and set off fireworks to praise a homemade day.
A few random poems:
- Violet Beauregarde… by Roald Dahl
- Море волнуется, манит к себе
- The Force Of Prayer, Or, The Founding Of Bolton, A Tradition by William Wordsworth
- Mary’s Son by Rudyard Kipling
- Владимир Маяковский – Заносы не дают железным дорогам жить… (РОСТА №838)
- To a Gentleman and Lady on the Death of the Lady’s Brother and Sister by Phillis Wheatley
- Ок Мельникова – Птицей
- Robert Burns: Sonnet Written On The Author’s Birthday, : On hearing a Thrush sing in his Morning Walk.
- From The Long Sad Party by Mark Strand
- Sonnet 06 poem – John Milton poems
- Яков Полонский – Ночь в Крыму
- The Music O’ The Dead by William Barnes
- Владимир Высоцкий – У Наполеона Ватерлоо есть хотя б
- Ольга Берггольц – Церковь “Дивная” в Угличе
- A Comparison. Addressed To A Young Lady by William Cowper
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
Alan Dugan (1923 – 2003) an American poet, a contemporary classic of American poetry.