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:
- Анатолий Жигулин – Марта, Марта! Весеннее имя
- Николай Огарев – Она никогда его не любила
- Hoffer by William Wordsworth
- Владимир Маяковский – Донецкий шахтер голодает… (РОСТА №619)
- Ольга Берггольц – В ложе Цимлянского моря
- Reverie Zahir U Din
- The Man Born to Farming by Wendell Berry
- Василий Тредиаковский – Описание грозы, бывшей в Гааге
- Music poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sonnet Xiv
- Алексей Хомяков – Раскаявшейся России
- Sonnet 94: They that have power to hurt and will do none by William Shakespeare
- Юрий Верховский – В майское утро
- One Lovely Name by Walter Savage Landor
- Владимир Маяковский – Не пей сырой воды! (Главполитпросвет №230)
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
- From The Frontier Of Writing by Seamus Heaney
- Follower by Seamus Heaney
- Exposure by Seamus Heaney
- Docker by Seamus Heaney
- Death Of A Naturalist by Seamus Heaney
- Casualty by Seamus Heaney
- Bogland by Seamus Heaney
- Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney
- Act of Union by Seamus Heaney
- Winters!!! by Aditya Kumar
- The Lent Lily by A. E. Housman
- Winters!!! by Aditya Kumar
- On the Idle Hill of Summer by A. E. Housman
- The Lent Lily by A. E. Housman
- On the Idle Hill of Summer by A. E. Housman
- Broken wings of a Heart by Saajida Gora
- Being Underwater by Sahiti Siddharth
- Awake by Sara Herlihy
- Attitude: Don Juan in the Shopping Mall by S. K. Kelen
- Aspirations by SAAJIDA GORA
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.