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the soothseekers have withdrawn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:
- Clear, with Light, Variable Winds poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Goddess by Tanisha Avarsekar
- An Indian Love Song by Sarojini Naidu
- Little Flute by Rabindranath Tagore
- Children’s Games by William Carlos Williams
- Book Fourteenth [conclusion] by William Wordsworth
- Orchard by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Blue-Eyed Ann by Tobias Smollett
- Your souls are ours by Philo Ikonya
- A Lovers’ Quarrel by Robert Browning
- Fragment—Her Flwoing Locks by Robert Burns
- An Epitaph On Sr John Walter, Lord Cheife Baron by William Strode
- Михаил Кузмин – Выздоравливающей
- The Uses of the Eye by Paul Blackburn
- To E.S. Salomon poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
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
- Fringed Gentian poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Frankincense and Myrrh poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Francis II, King of Naples poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Francis II, King of Naples poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Fragment poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Fool’s Money Bags poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Excerpt from “What’s O’Clock” poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Epitaph in a Church-Yard in Charleston, South Carolina poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Dreams poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Diya {original title is Greek, Delta-iota-psi-alpha} poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Crowned poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Crepuscule du Matin poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Crepuscule du Matin poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Convalescence poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Convalescence poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Climbing poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Climbing poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Clear, with Light, Variable Winds poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Behind a Wall poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
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.