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:
- Crows and Hawks by Richard Schiffman
- Юлия Друнина – Стал холоден мой тёплый старый дом
- Яков Полонский – Памяти В. М. Гаршина
- Владимир Британишский – Этот вечер
- Elegy On An Australian Schoolboy poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Я. П. Полонскому
- Владимир Маяковский – Декрет о взаимопомощи инвентарем (Главполитпросвет № 101)
- To A Girl In A Garden by Sappho
- Владимир Солоухин – Утро
- Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- how did poetry begin? by Raj Arumugam
- Владимир Луговской – Ночной патруль
- A Country Nosegay poem – Alfred Austin
- Владимир Набоков – Воскресение мёртвых
- Ярослав Смеляков – В защиту домино
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
- Hope And Riders
- Do I
- Communal War
- Blank Dreams
- Before
- Again
- A Voice
- A Toast To Nations
- What Of The Night
- Vows
- To Morrow
- The Winged Mariners
- The Watchman
- The Virgin Martyr
- The Vain Question
- The Soldiers Grave
- The Silence In The Church
- The Season
- The Resting Place
- The Old Manor House
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.