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:
- Robert Burns: Epistle To Hugh Parker:
- Николай Огарев – В прогулке поздней видел я
- Eternal Existence by Mark Miller
- Planetarium
- Before by Yehuda Amichai
- Владимир Высоцкий – Татуировка
- June Dreams, In January by Sidney Lanier
- Владимир Корнилов – Лермонтов
- Lines Written under the Picture of Miss Burns by Robert Burns
- Как воздух, математика нужна
- Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known by William Wordsworth
- Over the Carnage. by Walt Whitman
- Handy Man by Shel Silverstein
- In a Subway Station by Sara Teasdale
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Стучись, упорствуя, Кирка
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
- Вера Павлова – Подарил мне жизнь
- Вера Павлова – По счету
- Вера Павлова – Плачу, потому что не можешь со мной жить
- Вера Павлова – Перед дальней дорогой
- Вера Павлова – Память, дырявый мешок
- Вера Павлова – Отпала от пола
- Вера Павлова – Они влюблены и счастливы
- Вера Павлова – Объятье
- Вера Павлова – О чем
- Вера Павлова – Нежность больше не делится
- Вера Павлова – Нет, нет, не ревность
- Вера Павлова – Жизнь в посудной лавке
- Вера Павлова – Зеркало по природе правдиво
- Вера Павлова – Завещание
- Вера Павлова – Заплетала косички
- Вера Павлова – за руку здороваться с рекой
- Вера Павлова – Я дождевой червь
- Вера Павлова – Всходить на костёр Жанною
- Вера Павлова – Время уступать место
- Вера Павлова – Время бежит на время
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.