I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I’ll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:
but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is
magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:
I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up
and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:
I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:
at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!
A few random poems:
- Илья Эренбург – О Москве
- Олег Сердобольский – Перемена
- Epigram on the said Occasion by Robert Burns
- Василий Курочкин – Ни в мать, ни в отца
- Infant Sorrow by William Blake
- Наум Коржавин – Меня, как видно, Бог не звал
- Abt Vogler by Robert Browning
- An Incantation by Thomas Moore
- Drowned in Illusion by Rixa White
- On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Afterimages by Satish Verma
- Keen, Fitful Gusts are Whisp’ring Here and There poem – John Keats poems
- Tithonus poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Uncle Sammy by Will McKendree Carleton
- The Poor Lover to His Rich Mistress about to Marry His Coxcombly Rival by William Wycherley
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
- Sweethearts by Mary Gilmore
- Stars and Jasmine by Maurice Riordan
- St Patrick’s Day by Michael McGovern
- Singapore by Mary Gilmore
- Rile Me Up! by Michael D Wentworth
- Remembrance by Maya Angelou
- Raindrops by Michael Mulcahy
- Purgatory by Maxine Kumin
- Progress by Michael McGovern
- Pejar Creek by Mary Gilmore
- Passing Time by Maya Angelou
- O Singer in Brown by Mary Gilmore
- No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest by Mary Gilmore
- New York’s Bad Dream by Matthew Abuelo
- New York’s Last Gleanings by Matthew Abuelo
- Nationality by Mary Gilmore
- Momma Welfare Roll by Maya Angelou
- Modest Sounds by Michael Brandon Odom
- mine danse macabre doppelganger by matthew scott harris
- Million Man March Poem by Maya Angelou
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
Archie Randolph Ammons (1926-2001) was an important American poet, a modern classic, Ammons wrote about our relationship to nature in a way that is both comic and solemn. His poems often address religious and philosophical matters and scenes involving nature in a manner that is almost transcendental.