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 Высоцкий – Песня про стукача
- Владимир Маяковский – Врангель – фон… (РОСТА №472)
- Ольга Берггольц – Потеряла я вечером слово
- Holding On by Philip Levine
- Anarchy by Satish Verma
- Иван Бунин – За рекой луга зазеленели
- greece.html
- Sonnet CXXXI by William Shakespeare
- Grace Before Song poem – Ezra Pound poems
- The Lover Pleads With His Friend For Old Friends by William Butler Yeats
- Владимир Степанов – Наша Армия
- Ольга Берггольц – О да, простые, бедные слова
- Metamorphoses Of The Moon by Sylvia Plath
- Robert Burns: Lines On The Author’s Death: Written With The Supposed View Of Being Handed To Rankine After The Poet’s Interment
- The Deserter by Winifred Mary Letts
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
- The Sun Was Slumbering in the West by Thomas Hood
- The Song of the Shirt by Thomas Hood
- The Haunted House by Thomas Hood
- The Dream of Eugene Aram by Thomas Hood
- The Death Bed by Thomas Hood
- The Bridge of Sighs by Thomas Hood
- Silence by Thomas Hood
- Ruth by Thomas Hood
- Past and Present by Thomas Hood
- On Mistress Nicely, a Pattern for Housekeepers by Thomas Hood
- November by Thomas Hood
- No! by Thomas Hood
- I Remember, I Remember by Thomas Hood
- Gold! by Thomas Hood
- Flowers by Thomas Hood
- Faithless Sally Brown by Thomas Hood
- Faithless Nelly Gray by Thomas Hood
- Death by Thomas Hood
- Christmas Holidays by Thomas Hood
- Autumn by Thomas Hood
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.