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:
- Song Of A Dream by Sarojini Naidu
- Song For The Severed Head In `The King Of The Great Clock Tower’ by William Butler Yeats
- Низами Гянджеви – Лишь с луной сравниться
- Rita And The Rifle by Mahmoud Darwish
- This Morning by Raymond Carver
- Михаил Лермонтов – Я счастлив, тайный яд течёт в моей крови
- Алишер Навои – Поучительные заветы старости
- Игорь Северянин – Памяти О.Н. Чюминой
- Ольга Берггольц – Первое письмо на Каму
- Николай Языков – Чувствительное путешествие в Ревель
- Ecco Mormorar L’onde (Now The Waves Murmur) by Torquato Tasso
- I have fallen into unconsciousness by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Signals by Walid Saba
- The Bakchesarian Fountain poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Смерть в Мессине
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
- Sacrifice And Love
- Rule I By Eric Mottram Stop Writing Literature You Garrulous Indian
- Poetry And Politics
- Poem Stories
- Plato
- Peace Universal Good
- Paralipomemnon
- Our Refuge
- One Sweet White Light
- New Land
- Motionless Body
- Mother
- Minimalism And The Elm Choka
- Mark
- Love Flower
- Love
- Lord God Have Mercy On Me
- Libation
- Least In A List
- Interpret The Light
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.