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:
- Memory by Siegfried Sassoon
- Channels by Shel Silverstein
- Николай Языков – Вторая присяга
- Endymion: Book IV poem – John Keats poems
- Reason Use It Divine Matters
- Crazy Jane And Jack The Journeyman by William Butler Yeats
- Where we fall by Osman cisse Hanif
- Route Marchin’ by Rudyard Kipling
- Near The Wall Of A House by Yehuda Amichai
- A Hillside Thaw by Robert Frost
- Ольга Высотская – Детский сад
- Four Days In Vermont by Robert Creeley
- The Fairies by William Allingham
- Before The World Was Made by William Butler Yeats
- The Happy Lunatic by William Somervile
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
- Leaving and Leaving You by Sophie Hannah
- If It Were Beginning by Sriparna Bandyopadhyay
- Hypatia by Stanley Wilkin
- Homosexuality by Spencer Reece
- Highway to Happiness by Stacey Chillemi
- High school crush……lonesome awaits by Stephen Allen
- God’s Abdication by Snowdon King
- Family by Stacey Chillemi
- Everything He Did, He Did In Jest by stanley wilkin
- Entropy by Sriparna Bandyopadhyay
- Disconnect by Snowdon King
- Crazy Insane by Stephen Sweitzer
- By the Dusk – Ao Entardecer by Soaroir de Campos
- By Garpal Stream by Stanley Wilkin
- Buddha’s Laugh by Sonya Ki Tomlinson
- Beautiful Moroccan by Stanley Wilkin
- Ambrosia by Sonya Ki Tomlinson
- Alternate Destination by Sriparna Bandyopadhyay
- Adaptation by Sriparna Bandyopadhyay
- A Veterans Memories Breeze By In the Wind by Stacey Chillemi
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