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:
- Константин Бальмонт – Молитва последняя
- Whitsuntide An’ Club Walken by William Barnes
- A Civil War by Satish Verma
- Владимир Степанов – Весёлый транспорт
- A bat flits by Yosa Buson
- If You Only Knew by Robert Desnos
- Lemmebesomethin’ by Shel Silverstein
- Parnell by William Butler Yeats
- Lines Written In Dejection by William Butler Yeats
- Robert Burns: Phillis The Fair:
- Spiritual Memories of Mother by Raj Napal
- A Bucolic Betwixt Two; Lacon and Thyrsis by Robert Herrick
- 1914 V: The Soldier by Rupert Brooke
- Afternoon Rain in State Street poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Ольга Ермолаева – Если о плачущих
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 Берггольц – Озерный край
- Ольга Берггольц – Ответ
- Ольга Берггольц – От сердца к сердцу
- Ольга Берггольц – Осень (Мне осень озёрного края)
- Ольга Берггольц – Она дарить любила
- Ольга Берггольц – Огонь, и воду, и медные трубы
- Ольга Берггольц – Обещание
- Ольга Берггольц – О, наверное, он не вернётся
- Ольга Берггольц – О, где ты запела
- Ольга Берггольц – О да, простые, бедные слова
- Ольга Берггольц – Новогодний тост
- Ольга Берггольц – Ни до серебряной и ни до золотой
- Ольга Берггольц – Не знаю, не знаю, живу
- Ольга Берггольц – Не сына, не младшего брата
- Ольга Берггольц – Не может быть, чтоб жили мы напрасно
- Ольга Берггольц – Наш сад
- Ольга Берггольц – Нам от тебя теперь не оторваться
- Ольга Берггольц – Надежда
- Ольга Берггольц – На Ивана-пьющего
- Ольга Берггольц – Моя медаль
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.