A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000)
by Alec Derwent Hope
What did I study in your School of Night?
When your mouth’s first unfathomable yes
Opened your body to be my book, I read
My answers there and learned the spell aright,
Yet, though I searched and searched, could never guess
What spirits it raised nor where their questions led.
Those others, familiar tenants of your sleep,
The whisperers, the grave somnambulists
Whose eyes turn in to scrutinize their woe,
The giant who broods above the nightmare steep,
That sleeping girl, shuddering, with clenched fists,
A vampire baby suckling at her toe,
They taught me most. The scholar held his pen
And watched his blood drip thickly on the page
To form a text in unknown characters
Which, as I scanned them, changed and changed again:
The lines grew bars, the bars a Delphic cage
And I the captive of his magic verse.

A few random poems:
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Пытки
- Poem of Joys. by Walt Whitman
- Atavism by William Stafford
- The Fallen House
- Bermudas poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- The Song of My Heart by Olawuyi Mutiu
- Олег Сердобольский – Стой, кто идет
- An Act of Faith by Talha Jafri
- Юрий Галансков – Рванулось пламя из ствола
- Further Instructions poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Robert Burns: To Daunton Me:
- Oh Mother poem – Amy Haritha Suseel poems | Poems and Poetry
- They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine
- To a Sky-Lark by William Wordsworth
- Анатолий Жигулин – Эпоха
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
- Reverie Of Ormuz The Persian
- Reverie Of Mahomed Akram At The Tamarind Tank
- Request
- Reminiscence Of Mahomed Akram
- Protest By Zahir U Din
- Prayer
- Palm Trees By The Sea
- On The City Wall
- On Pilgrimage
- Ojira To Her Lover
- Oh Unforgotten And Only Lover
- Oh Masters
- Oh Life I Have Taken You For My Lover
- No Rival Like The Past
- Nay Not To Night
- My Paramour Was Loneliness
- My Desire
- Middle Age
- Memory
- Marriage Thoughts By Morsellin Khan
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
Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) was an Australian poet and essayist known for his satirical slant. He was also a critic, teacher and academic.