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:
- Water-Fowl Observed Frequently Over The Lakes Of Rydal And Grasmere by William Wordsworth
- O What Is That Sound by W H Auden
- Аля Кудряшева – Я этой ночью уйду, не спи
- Sonnet XII. On Leaving Some Friends At An Early Hour poem – John Keats poems
- Федор Сологуб – Словно лепится сурепица
- Dreamer
- Каждый день и каждый миг судьбу благодарю
- Edom O’ Gordon poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Lovers on Aran by Seamus Heaney
- Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling
- Earthy Anecdote by Wallace Stevens
- Sonnet 125: Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy by William Shakespeare
- Nearly A Valediction by Marilyn Hacker
- Listen To The Mustn’ts by Shel Silverstein
- Виктор Гусев – Октябрьский смотр
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 Гумилев – Звездный ужас
- Николай Гумилев – Злобный гений, царь сомнений
- Николай Гумилев – Живала Ниагара
- Николай Гумилев – Жестокой
- Николай Гумилев – Заводи
- Николай Гумилев – Зараза
- Николай Гумилев – Заклинание
- Николай Гумилев – Зачарованный викинг, я шел по земле
- Николай Гумилев – За стенами старого аббатства
- Николай Гумилев – За гробом
- Николай Гумилев – За часом час бежит и падает во тьму
- Николай Гумилев – Юдифь
- Николай Гумилев – Орел Синдбада
- Николай Гумилев – Они спустились до реки
- Николай Гумилев – Она говорила
- Николай Гумилев – Он воздвигнул свой храм на горе
- Николай Гумилев – Ольге Людвиговне Кардовской
- Николай Гумилев – О, если я весь мир постиг
- Николай Гумилев – Новорожденному
- Николай Гумилев – Норвежские горы
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.