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:
- Sonnet 142: Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate by William Shakespeare
- Гавриил Державин – Поминки
- Яков Полонский – Братья
- A Poet’s Welcome to his Love-Begotten Daughter by Robert Burns
- My arm for a pillow by Yosa Buson
- Алексей Толстой – Войдем сюда; здесь меж руин
- The Masks of Love
- Walls at Drogheda by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Not Waving But Drowning by Stevie Smith
- The Harbour by Winifred Mary Letts
- Жан де Лафонтен – Врачи
- Николай Заболоцкий – Горийская симфония
- New Hampshire by Robert Frost
- Омар Хайям – Когда к жизни Любовь меня в мир призвала
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
- Николай Заболоцкий – Генеральская дача
- Николай Заболоцкий – Футбол
- Николай Заболоцкий – Это было давно
- Николай Заболоцкий – Движение
- Николай Заболоцкий – Дождь
- Николай Заболоцкий – Детство
- Николай Заболоцкий – Цирк
- Николай Заболоцкий – Читайте, деревья, стихи Гезиода
- Николай Заболоцкий – Человек в воде
- Николай Заболоцкий – Царица мух
- Николай Заболоцкий – Болезнь
- Николай Заболоцкий – Битва с предками
- Николай Заболоцкий – Бетховен
- Николай Заболоцкий – Бегство в Египет
- Николай Заболоцкий – Баллада Жуковского
- Николай Языков – Жизни баловень счастливый
- Николай Языков – Землетрясенье
- Николай Языков – Записки А. С. Дириной
- Николай Языков – Я. П. Полонскому (Благодарю тебя за твой подарок милой…)
- Николай Языков – Вторая присяга
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.