by Alden Nowlan
Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,
lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,
stumbling through tamarack swamps,
came the bull moose
to be stopped at last by a pole-fenced pasture.
Too tired to turn or, perhaps, aware
there was no place left to go, he stood with the cattle.
They, scenting the musk of death, seeing his great head
like the ritual mask of a blood god, moved to the other end
of the field, and waited.
The neighbours heard of it, and by afternoon
cars lined the road. The children teased him
with alder switches and he gazed at them
like an old, tolerant collie. The woman asked
if he could have escaped from a Fair.
The oldest man in the parish remembered seeing
a gelded moose yoked with an ox for plowing.
The young men snickered and tried to pour beer
down his throat, while their girl friends took their pictures.
And the bull moose let them stroke his tick-ravaged flanks,
let them pry open his jaws with bottles, let a giggling girl
plant a little purple cap
of thistles on his head.
When the wardens came, everyone agreed it was a shame
to shoot anything so shaggy and cuddlesome.
He looked like the kind of pet
women put to bed with their sons.
So they held their fire. But just as the sun dropped in the river
the bull moose gathered his strength
like a scaffolded king, straightened and lifted his horns
so that even the wardens backed away as they raised their rifles.
When he roared, people ran to their cars. All the young men
leaned on their automobile horns as he toppled.

A few random poems:
- Владимир Маяковский – Со страхом и трепетом открывали газету… (РОСТА №705)
- Mother, I cannot mind my Wheel by Walter Savage Landor
- Day’s End by Tu Fu
- Владимир Высоцкий – Вратарь (Льву Яшину)
- Robert Burns: Lines On The Fall Of Fyers Near Loch-Ness.: Written with a Pencil on the Spot.
- Алексей Плещеев – Дети века все больные
- Юнна Мориц – Комарово
- Take My Hands
- Олег Бундур – Папа пристал
- Sonnet CXVIII by William Shakespeare
- Searing Heat by Satish Verma
- meeting.html
- Parted by Siegfried Sassoon
- Анатолий Жигулин – Кукует поздняя кукушка
- A man said to the universe: by Stephen Crane
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 Giver by Sara Teasdale
- The Gift by Sara Teasdale
- The Flight by Sara Teasdale
- The Faery Forest by Sara Teasdale
- The Dreams Of My Heart by Sara Teasdale
- The Crystal Gazer by Sara Teasdale
- The Coin by Sara Teasdale
- The Cloud by Sara Teasdale
- The Carpenter’s Son by Sara Teasdale
- The Broken Field by Sara Teasdale
- The Blind by Sara Teasdale
- The Answer by Sara Teasdale
- Spring In War Time by Sara Teasdale
- Soul’s Birth by Sara Teasdale
- A Song To Eleonora Duse In “Francesca da Rimini ” by Sara Teasdale
- Song At Capri by Sara Teasdale
- Since There Is No Escape by Sara Teasdale
- The Return by Sara Teasdale
- Pity by Sara Teasdale
- Pierrot’s Song by Sara Teasdale
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