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the soothseekers have withdrawn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:
- never.html
- We Astronomers by Rebecca Elson
- A Precise Woman by Yehuda Amichai
- Lover’s Gifts XLII: Are You a Mere Picture by Rabindranath Tagore
- When Trust Fails… by Olaniyi Beloved Abimbola
- Children Are Like Water by Robert Lloyd Jaffe
- Валерий Брюсов – К портрету К.Д. Бальмонта
- Hai Kou
- Bamboo Adobe by Wang Wei
- Владимир Маяковский – В России голод… (Главполитпросвет № 236)
- Projector by Shreekumar Varma
- On The Cliffs Newport
- The Soul’s Prayer by Sarojini Naidu
- Николай Языков – Вторая присяга
- Live Inspired With Famous Inspiring Quotes
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
- Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony by Shel Silverstein
- Listen To The Mustn’ts by Shel Silverstein
- Lemmebesomethin’ by Shel Silverstein
- I’ve Been Working So Hard by Shel Silverstein
- In The Hills Of Shiloh by Shel Silverstein
- In Search Of Cinderella by Shel Silverstein
- I’m So Good That I Don’t Have To Brag by Shel Silverstein
- I’m My Own Grandpa by Shel Silverstein
- If The World Was Crazy by Shel Silverstein
- If I Had A Brontosaurus by Shel Silverstein
- I Once Knew A Woman by Shel Silverstein
- I Can’t Touch The Sun by Shel Silverstein
- I Call That True Love by Shel Silverstein
- Hug O’War by Shel Silverstein
- Hippo’s Hope by Shel Silverstein
- Hector The Collector by Shel Silverstein
- Hard To Please by Shel Silverstein
- Handy Man by Shel Silverstein
- Hamlet As Told On The Street by Shel Silverstein
- For What She Had Done by Shel Silverstein
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.