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:
- An Ode of the Birth of our Saviour by Robert Herrick
- Book Tenth {Residence in France continued] by William Wordsworth
- Memorials of A Tour In Scotland, 1803 I. Departure From The Vale Of Grasmere, August 1803 by William Wordsworth
- At A Calvary Near The Ancre by Wilfred Owen
- A Shakespeare Memorial poem – Alfred Austin
- Алексей Плещеев – Тобой лишь ясны дни мои
- Silence by Thomas Hood
- Наум Коржавин – Иль впрямь я разлюбил свою страну?
- A Grace before Dinner by Robert Burns
- Владимир Корнилов – Небо
- The Duel poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Sonnet # 7 by Luis A. Estable
- Алишер Навои – Уже белеет голова
- Gyrations by Satish Verma
- The Rape of the Lock: Canto 1 poem – Alexander Pope
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
- When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d. by Walt Whitman
- When I read the Book. by Walt Whitman
- When I peruse the Conquer’d Fame. by Walt Whitman
- When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer. by Walt Whitman
- When I heard at the Close of the Day. by Walt Whitman
- What think You I take my Pen in Hand? by Walt Whitman
- What Place is Besieged? by Walt Whitman
- What General has a Good Army. by Walt Whitman
- What Best I See In Thee. by Walt Whitman
- What am I, After All? by Walt Whitman
- We Two—How Long We were Fool’d. by Walt Whitman
- We Two Boys Together Clinging. by Walt Whitman
- Visor’d. by Walt Whitman
- Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field. by Walt Whitman
- Turn, O Libertad. by Walt Whitman
- To You. by Walt Whitman
- To Thee, Old Cause! by Walt Whitman
- To the Garden the World. by Walt Whitman
- To One Shortly to Die. by Walt Whitman
- To Him that was Crucified. by Walt Whitman
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.