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the soothseekers have withdrawn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:
- Robert Burns: I Murder Hate:
- The Natural History of Elephants by Milton Acorn
- The Great Adventure Of Max Breuck poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sixteen Dead Men by William Butler Yeats
- “Give me a roof where Wisdom dwells” poem – Alfred Austin
- Tori Soorat Kay Balihaari poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- For what’s worth breathing by Rixa White
- Benediction by Rabindranath Tagore
- From My Diary, July 1914 by Wilfred Owen
- An Evening in the Mountains by Wang Wei
- On The Author Of Letters On Literature by William Cowper
- The Dying Christian to His Soul poem – Alexander Pope
- minding love by Raj Arumugam
- Phantom by Samuel Coleridge
- We put the urn aboard ship by Sappho
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
- Denner’s Old Woman by William Cowper
- On The Death Of The Vice-Chancellor, A Physician (Translated From Milton) by William Cowper
- Catharina : The Second Part. On Her Marriage To George Courtenay, Esq. by William Cowper
- By Philemon by William Cowper
- By Moschus by William Cowper
- By Heraclides by William Cowper
- By Callimachus by William Cowper
- On the Burning of Lord Mansfield’s Library by William Cowper
- Boadicea. An Ode by William Cowper
- Aspirations Of The Soul After God by William Cowper
- Apology to Delia by William Cowper
- Anti-Thelyphthora. A Tale In Verse by William Cowper
- Answer To Stanzas Addressed To Lady Hesketh By Miss Catharine Fanshawe, In Returning A Poem by William Cowper
- Annus Memorabilis : Written in Commemoration of His Majesty’s Happy Recovery by William Cowper
- An Ode, On Reading Mr. Richardson’s History Of Sir Charles Grandison by William Cowper
- An Epitaph by William Cowper
- An Epitaph (From The Greek) by William Cowper
- An Epitaph 4 (From The Greek) by William Cowper
- An Epitaph 3 (From The Greek) by William Cowper
- An Epitaph 2 (From The Greek) by William Cowper
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.