Standardization

When, darkly brooding on this Modern Age,

The journalist with his marketable woes

Fills up once more the inevitable page

Of fatuous, flatulent, Sunday-paper prose;

Whenever the green aesthete starts to whoop

With horror at the house not made with hands

And when from vacuum cleaners and tinned soup

Another pure theosophist demands

Rebirth in other, less industrial stars

Where huge towns thrust up in synthetic stone

And films and sleek miraculous motor cars

And celluloid and rubber are unknown;

When from his vegetable Sunday School

Emerges with the neatly maudlin phrase

Still one more Nature poet, to rant or drool

About the “Standardization of the Race”;

I see, stooping among her orchard trees,

The old, sound Earth, gathering her windfalls in,

Broad in the hams and stiffening at the knees,

Pause and I see her grave malicious grin.

For there is no manufacturer competes

With her in the mass production of shapes and things.

Over and over she gathers and repeats

The cast of a face, a million butterfly wings.

She does not tire of the pattern of a rose.

Her oldest tricks still catch us with surprise.

She cannot recall how long ago she chose

The streamlined hulls of fish, the snail’s long eyes,

Love, which still pours into its ancient mould

The lashing seed that grows to a man again,

From whom by the same processes unfold

Unending generations of living men.

She has standardized his ultimate needs and pains.

Lost tribes in a lost language mutter in

His dreams: his science is tethered to their brains,

His guilt merely repeats Original Sin.

And beauty standing motionless before

Her mirror sees behind her, mile on mile,

A long queue in an unknown corridor,

Anonymous faces plastered with her smile.

Poetry Monster – Home

A few random 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 

• Arrival by William Carlos Williams by William Carlos Williams
• April Is The Saddest Month by William Carlos Williams by William Carlos Williams
• Après le Bain by William Carlos Williams by William Carlos Williams
• Approach Of Winter by William Carlos Williams by William Carlos Williams
• A Sort Of A Song by William Carlos Williams by William Carlos Williams
• A Goodnight by William Carlos Williams by William Carlos Williams
• A Celebration by William Carlos Williams by William Carlos Williams
• Women And Roses by Robert Browning by Anglo File
• Venus, on a fur by Witty Fay by Anglo File
• Ultima Thule by William Ellery Leonard by Anglo File
• To the Victor by William Ellery Leonard by Anglo File
• The Image Of Delight by William Ellery Leonard by Anglo File
• The First Part: Sonnet 5 – How that vast heaven intitled First is roll’d, by William Drummond by Anglo File
• The First Part: Sonnet 4 – Fair is my yoke, though grievous be my pains, by William Drummond by Anglo File
• The First Part: Sonnet 3 – Ye who so curiously do paint your thoughts, by William Drummond by Anglo File
• The First Part: Sonnet 2 – I know that all beneath the moon decays by William Drummond by Anglo File
• The First Part: Sonnet 14 – Nor Arne, nor Mincius, nor stately Tiber, by William Drummond by Anglo File
• The First Part: Sonnet 13 – O sacred blush, impurpling cheeks’ pure skies by William Drummond by Anglo File
• The First Part: Sonnet 12 – Ah! burning thoughts, now let me take some rest, by William Drummond by Anglo File
• The First Part: Sonnet 11 – Lamp of heaven’s crystal hall that brings the hours, by William Drummond by Anglo File

More external links (open in a new tab):

Russian Commerce Agency

Dealing Monster

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

Poems by Author and Category

The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works