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:
- The Internet Romance
- Song Of The Devoted Slave
- Михаил Ломоносов – На сочетание стихов Российских
- The Distant Winter by Philip Levine
- The Wish to be Generous by Wendell Berry
- Trial by Ruth Padel
- WHAT ASYLUM! by Satish Verma
- Николай Карамзин – К бедному поэту
- Fragmentary Blue by Robert Frost
- Words Of Advice by Ronald G. Auguste
- Владимир Британишский – Уронили, потеряли
- Song to the Evening Star by Thomas Campbell
- Two Songs From A Play by William Butler Yeats
- dance of life by Raj Arumugam
- The Dawn Of Gods Sabbath
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
- Two Hundred Years After by Siegfried Sassoon
- Twelve Months After by Siegfried Sassoon
- Trench Duty by Siegfried Sassoon
- Tree and Sky by Siegfried Sassoon
- Together by Siegfried Sassoon
- Today by Siegfried Sassoon
- To Victory by Siegfried Sassoon
- To My Brother by Siegfried Sassoon
- To Leonide Massine in ‘Cleopatra’ by Siegfried Sassoon
- To His Dead Body by Siegfried Sassoon
- To Any Dead Officer by Siegfried Sassoon
- To a Very Wise Man by Siegfried Sassoon
- To a Childless Woman by Siegfried Sassoon
- Thrushes by Siegfried Sassoon
- ‘They’ by Siegfried Sassoon
- Their Frailty by Siegfried Sassoon
- The Working Party by Siegfried Sassoon
- The Troops by Siegfried Sassoon
- The Tombstone-Maker by Siegfried Sassoon
- The Road by Siegfried Sassoon
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