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:
- Вера Павлова – Поколенье, лишённое почерка и походки
- John Bloom In Lon’on by William Barnes
- Ольга Ермолаева – Будет весь день долбить
- Broken wings of a Heart by Saajida Gora
- In Memory of Sigmund Freud by W. H. Auden
- Константин Батюшков – Мои пенаты
- A Winter Night by Robert Burns
- Give Me Back My Rags by Vasko Popa
- Константин Бальмонт – Морское дно
- The Masks of Love
- Let Him In by Vishnu J Mohan
- Михаил Лермонтов – Всевышний произнес свой приговор
- Sonnet 06
- Gwain To Feäir by William Barnes
- How To Use Vellum For Your Card Making Ideas
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
- An Afternoon by Raymond Carver
- Watching the Bird Watcher by Richard Schiffman
- Virtual Impressions by Renu Ayyar
- Two Wings by Ricardo Sternberg
- They won’t Know by Rifat Ilgaz
- The Laws of God, The Laws of Man by A. E. Housman
- The Invention of Honey by Ricardo Sternberg
- Swallows by Richard Schiffman
- Supply=Demand by Ricardo Sternberg
- Skyscrapers by Rifat Ilgaz
- Silence by Riju Dave
- Rainbow by Ria De Torres
- Only If I Know by Rifat Ilgaz
- My Search by Renu Ayyar
- My Partner in Crime by Rennu Ayyar
- My Last Poem by Rifat Ilgaz
- Man Versus Satan by Shahida Latif
- Lovers in Cafe by Aiyah De Torres
- LET Go.. by Renu Ayyar
- In Poetry by Rifat Ilgaz
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.