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the soothseekers have withdrawn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:
- Новелла Матвеева – Когда Вселенная открывает нам добровольно
- Telescope by Mark R Slaughter
- The Tree by Sara Teasdale
- An Elegy poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Lines Written On A Blank Leaf In A Copy Of The Author’s Poem “The Excursion,” by William Wordsworth
- Crocodile’s Toothache by Shel Silverstein
- Robert Burns: Lines Sent To Sir John Whiteford, Bart: With The Lament On The Death Of the Earl Of Glencairn
- Poetic Abbreviations, Poetry Abbreviations
- blessing for sound health by matthew scott harris
- My Partner in Crime by Rennu Ayyar
- Computer Cookies: Are They Good or Bad?
- Владимир Степанов – Кот
- Hope A-Left Behind by William Barnes
- Sonnet: To Time by Sylvia Plath
- The Explorer by Rudyard Kipling
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
- Pheasant by Sylvia Plath
- Perseus by Sylvia Plath
- Parliament Hill Fields by Sylvia Plath
- Paralytic by Sylvia Plath
- Spinster by Sylvia Plath
- Spider by Sylvia Plath
- Sow by Sylvia Plath
- Southern Sunrise by Sylvia Plath
- Snakecharmer by Sylvia Plath
- Sculptor by Sylvia Plath
- Rhyme by Sylvia Plath
- Resolve by Sylvia Plath
- Recantation by Sylvia Plath
- Purdah by Sylvia Plath
- Prospect by Sylvia Plath
- Private Ground by Sylvia Plath
- Point Shirley by Sylvia Plath
- Poems, Potatoes by Sylvia Plath
- Pheasant by Sylvia Plath
- Perseus by Sylvia Plath
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.