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the soothseekers have withdrawn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:
- Олег Бундур – Учительница открыла журнал
- Last Words by Philip Levine
- Inversnaid poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- A Sculptor’s Vow by Nikhil Srinivas
- The Last Battle Of The Cid
- English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. Home. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.
- The Next Chance
- Love’s Blindness poem – Alfred Austin
- Вероника Тушнова – У всех бывают слабости минуты
- Goblin Revel by Siegfried Sassoon
- Lover’s Gifts LII: Tired of Waiting by Rabindranath Tagore
- Ольга Седакова – Вениамин
- Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been by William Shakespeare
- Cuckoo Song by Rudyard Kipling
- A Highly Valuable Chain Of Thoughts poem – Andrew Lang poems
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
- everything is a lie by tulip
- Dreaming of Li Po by Tu Fu
- Day’s End by Tu Fu
- Can You See The Pride In The Panther? by Tupac Shakur
- By the Lake by Tu Fu
- Ballad of the Old Cypress by Tu Fu
- Ballad of the Army Carts by Tu Fu
- Ballad Of The Press-Gang At Shihao Village by Du Fu
- Aphrodite – The Birth by Uma Maheswari Anandane
- Alone, Looking for Blossoms Along the River by Tu Fu
- Yet Gentle Will the Griffin Be by Vachel Lindsay
- Yankee Doodle by Vachel Lindsay
- Written for a Musician by Vachel Lindsay
- With a Bouquet of Twelve Roses by Vachel Lindsay
- Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket by Vachel Lindsay
- Who Knows? by Vachel Lindsay
- Where Is the Real Non-Resistant by Vachel Lindsay
- Where Is David, the Next King of Israel? by Vachel Lindsay
- When Gassy Thompson Struck It Rich by Vachel Lindsay
- When Bryan Speaks by Vachel Lindsay
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.