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the soothseekers have withdrawn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:
- Back-View by William Ernest Henley
- The Lover Mourns For The Loss Of Love by William Butler Yeats
- Reverie Zahir U Din
- The Poplars by William Barnes
- Галина Гампер – Забываю я все
- The Storm by Sara Teasdale
- The Last Summer by Subhash Misra
- The Daughter Goes To Camp by Sharon Olds
- Minoan Porcelain
- inscription on Mr. Syme’s crystal goblet by Robert Burns
- Trio Of Love Songs by Sylvia Plath
- Sonnet # 8 by Luis A. Estable
- Владимир Набоков – Скитальцы
- Владимир Маяковский – Про Тита и Ваньку
- Robert Burns: Ploughman’s Life, The:
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
- Post coitum omne animal triste est sive gallus et mulier by T. Wignesan.
- Plaidoirie for a “Prince” of Jaffna by T. Wignesan
- Petrarchan Sonnet: If no one else breathed in this wide, wide world by T. Wignesan
- Paris, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem: Paris by T. Wignesan.
- Nevermore, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s sonnet: Nevermore by T. Wignesan
- Master Valluvan, the long-misunderstood Tamil Mentor by T. Wignesan
- Limerick: Once a Great Leader with empty pockets by T. Wignesan
- Criss-Cross Acrostic*: Ai My Eye ! by T. Wignesan
- Copla Suelta: The One and the Same Dream by T. Wignesan
- Ballade: In favour of those called Decadents and Symbolists, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s Ballade: En faveur des dénommés Déca by T Wignesan
- Am I the Assassin or the Undertaker by T. Wignesan
- Whispers of Immortality by T. S. Eliot
- The Song Of The Jellicles by T. S. Eliot
- The Rum Tum Tugger by T. S. Eliot
- The Old Gumbie Cat by T. S. Eliot
- The Naming Of Cats by T. S. Eliot
- The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot
- The Boston Evening Transcript by T. S. Eliot
- The Ad-Dressing Of Cats by T. S. Eliot
- Sweeney Erect by T. S. Eliot
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.