A poem by Alexander Block – Alexandre Block – Alexandr Blok – Александр Блок
(1880-1921)
A small circus is amazing;
It’s for kids who are merry and bright;
There a girl and a boy’re gazing
At the ladies, kings, and droll sprites.
… And that terrible music cries over our lot,
Despondently howls the bow…
The scary sprite has captured a tiny tot,
With cranberry juice dripping down.
– The boy –
He’ll be rescued from a new burst of anger
With a wave of a delicate hand.
There – lights coming on,
See their growing reflection?
See the smoke? See the torch on the stand?
This must be the royal procession.
– The girl –
Come now, why all this teasing talk?
This is the devil’s escort…
In the daylight the queen goes out for a walk,
Head to toe with rosebuds decorated.
And escort of knights hold the train of her frock
And jingle their swords, all excited.
Suddenly the clown twists in the lights
Screaming, «Please help me! Please help!
I am bleeding red cranberry juice!
I have bandages made of rags!
I have a paper helmet on my head!
I’ve a wooden sword in my hand!»
Here both the girl and the boy broke into tears,
And the merry street circus shut its doors.
A few random poems:
- Calligraphy of geese by Yosa Buson
- Ready for Retirement by Mike Yuan
- Lost Time by Rabindranath Tagore
- I Know A Man by Robert Creeley
- Владимир Солоухин – Ветер
- From Milton: And did those feet by William Blake
- The Alchemist in the City poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Roads poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- I Grieved For Buonaparte by William Wordsworth
- A Little Memory
- A Ballad (Thesis for a Doctor’s Degree) poem – Andrei Voznesensky poems
- A Toccata Of Galuppi’s by Robert Browning
- Карл Сэндберг – Джаз-фантазия
- Sonnet 135: Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will by William Shakespeare
- Others may Praise what They Like. by Walt Whitman
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
- The Campera, the Foreigner y el Novio by Marjorie Kanter
- The Boy by Marilyn Hacker
- The Aegean by Maria Luisa Spaziani
- The Gate by Marie Howe
- The Copper Beech by Marie Howe
- Synchronicity by Marina Cecilia Kohon
- Subjective Genocide by Marie Starr
- Subject to Change by Marilyn L. Taylor
- Spenser’s Ireland by Marianne Moore
- Song by Margaret Widdemer
- Silence by Marianne Moore
- Scars on Paper by Marilyn Hacker
- Rosemary by Marianne Moore
- Release by Marie Starr
- Reading Runes by Marina Cecilia Kohon
- Portrait in Black and White by Marjorie Kanter
- Poetry by Marianne Moore
- Peter by Marianne Moore
- Passion by Sera Jacob
- Paragraphs from a Day-Book by Marilyn Hacker
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

Alexander Blok (1880-1921), also Block, was a Russian poet, writer, publicist, playwright, translator and literary critic. A classic of Russian literature.