A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)
A life hauls itself uphill
through hoar-mist steaming
the sun’s tongue licking
leaf upon leaf into stricken liquid
When? When? cry the soothseekers
but time is a bloodshot eye
seeing its last of beauty its own
foreclosure
a bloodshot mind
finding itself unspeakable
What is the last thought?
Now I will let you know?
or, Now I know?
(porridge of skull-splinters, brain tissue
mouth and throat membrane, cranial fluid)
Shattered head on the breast
of a wooded hill
Laid down there endlessly so
tendrils soaked into matted compose
became a root
torqued over the faint springhead
groin whence illegible
matter leaches: worm-borings, spurts of silt
volumes of sporic changes
hair long blown into far follicles
blasted into a chosen place
Revenge on the head (genitals, breast, untouched)
revenge on the mouth
packed with its inarticulate confessions
revenge on the eyes
green-gray and restless
revenge on the big and searching lips
the tender tongue
revenge on the sensual, on the nose the
carrier of history
revenge on the life devoured
in another incineration
You can walk by such a place, the earth is
made of them
where the stretched tissue of a field or woods
is humid
with beloved matter
the soothseekers have withdrawn
you feel no ghost, only a sporic chorus
when that place utters its worn sigh
let us have peace
And the shattered head answers back
And I believed I was loved, I believed I loved
Who did this to us?

A few random poems:
- Юлия Жадовская – Да, я вижу
- After Sunset by William Allingham
- The Living Beauty by William Butler Yeats
- Облако в штанах – Владимир Маяковский: читать поэму онлайн, текст стихотворения полностью – Стихи Poetry Monster
- A View of the Han River by Wang Wei
- All That’s Past by Walter de la Mare
- Ок Мельникова – Если есть от кого ждать писем
- Cruisers by Rudyard Kipling
- Rip van Winkle’s dream by Raj Arumugam
- Song. Written On A Blank Page In Beaumont And Fletcher’s Works poem – John Keats poems
- A Jog-Trot Pair by Thomas Hardy
- Route Marchin’ by Rudyard Kipling
- It Is No Spirit Who From Heaven Hath Flown by William Wordsworth
- Not Intrigued With Evening by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Сознание
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
- Shall I like An Eternal World by Nithin Purple
- Sea World by Nin Andrews
- For Roman Polanski by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Red Roses by Nithin Purple
- Rainy Day by Nikhil Jain
- “Flight to the Moon” by Nina Gabriel
- First Look at Mom by Nikhil Jain
- The Poet’s Grave by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Nijole Miliauskaite – Nijole Miliauskaite
- Nijole Miliauskaite – Nijole Miliauskaite
- When Lovely Woman Stoops To Folly by Oliver Goldsmith
- The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith
- Picture by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Palms and Hearts by Olawuyi Mutiu
- Orchard by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Only in my dreams by Nina Gabriel
- On Fair Compassion by Nithin Purple
- On An Insight On Grecian Spring by Nithin Purple
- On An Arctic Winter by Nithin Purple
- On A World Of Imaginary & Freedom Dwell by Nithin Purple
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
Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012) was an American poet, essayist, and feminist.