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:
- Наум Коржавин – Грустная самопародия
- Exodus by Taha Muhammad Ali
- Федор Сологуб – Я дорогой невинной и смелою
- A Girl Was Singing In A Church Choir poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- Loot by Rudyard Kipling
- What Peace Is Like
- The Princess: A Medley: Tears, Idle Tears poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Our Whole Life
- The Hut
- Анатолий Жигулин – Иду в полях
- The Black Shawl poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Владимир Солоухин – Теперь-то уж плакать нечего
- The Dragon and The Unicorn by Mary Etta Metcalf
- The Bayadere
- English Poetry. Charles Wesley. Hark! A Voice Divides the Sky. Чарльз Уэсли.
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
- a_choka_is_a_littoral_drift.html
- the_solitary_oak_on_mount_kremlin_bicetre.html
- the_prison_of_the_past.html
- The Dead Woman by Pablo Neruda, La Muerta
- pathos_is_the_skyward_tanka.html
- nominalism_is_a_liquid_kuhi.html
- eclipse_of_love.html
- divided_passion.html
- death039s_claim.html
- dear_bhikkhu_a_eulogy.html
- as_with_a_senryu_s_hardening_ridge.html
- A Gogyohka and the Forgotten Panopticon
- a_faded_postcard_is_a_tanka_daydream.html
- krishna039s_advice_to_arjuna.html
- krishna039s_advice_to_arjuna.html
- Exodus by Michael Nikoletseas
- Saint George the Dragon by Michael Nikoletseas
- heal_me_slowly.html
- gazebo.html
- all-days-seem-same.html
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.