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the soothseekers have withdrawn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:
- Омар Хайям – Этот мастер всевышний
- Яков Полонский – После праздника
- O Tell Me The Truth About Love by W H Auden
- In the Night poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Always Unsuitable by Marge Piercy
- Владимир Маяковский – Подлиза
- Новелла Матвеева – Подсолнух
- Abbey Assaroe by William Allingham
- Before the Battle by Siegfried Sassoon
- He Remembers Forgotten Beauty by William Butler Yeats
- A Light Woman by Robert Browning
- A dragonfly that committed suicide by Preeth Nambiar
- Female Author by Sylvia Plath
- Looking Fire
- Низами Гянджеви – Месяц неполный прошел
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
- I Heard You, Solemn-sweet Pipes of the Organ. by Walt Whitman
- I hear it was Charged against Me. by Walt Whitman
- I Hear America Singing. by Walt Whitman
- I Dream’d in a Dream. by Walt Whitman
- I am He that Aches with Love. by Walt Whitman
- Hush’d be the Camps To-day. by Walt Whitman
- How Solemn as One by One. by Walt Whitman
- Hours Continuing Long. by Walt Whitman
- Here the Frailest Leaves of Me. by Walt Whitman
- Here, Sailor. by Walt Whitman
- Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour. by Walt Whitman
- Great are the Myths. by Walt Whitman
- Gods. by Walt Whitman
- Gliding Over All. by Walt Whitman
- Give me the Splendid, Silent Sun. by Walt Whitman
- Germs. by Walt Whitman
- Full of Life, Now. by Walt Whitman
- From Paumanok Starting. by Walt Whitman
- From My Last Years. by Walt Whitman
- From Far Dakota’s Cañons. by Walt Whitman
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.