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:
- Ярослав Смеляков – Стихи, написанные в псковской гостинице
- Anecdote Of The Jar by Wallace Stevens
- As I Watch’d the Ploughman Ploughing. by Walt Whitman
- Владимир Степанов – Рассказ оружейника
- Sonnet 56: Sweet love, renew thy force, be it not said by William Shakespeare
- Жан де Лафонтен – Львиный указ
- Recorders Ages Hence. by Walt Whitman
- Николай Заболоцкий – Человек в воде
- Evening Love Song by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Иннокентий Анненский – Из окна
- To Dorothy by Marvin Bell
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Новогоднее видение
- Юлия Друнина – Альпинисту
- Orlando Furioso Canto 19 by Ludovico Ariosto
- Let go of your worries by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
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
- Robinson by Weldon Kees
- The End Of The Library by Weldon Kees
- Late Evening Song by Weldon Kees
- La Vita Nuova by Weldon Kees
- Interregnum by Weldon Kees
- Dead March by Weldon Kees
- Covering Two Years by Weldon Kees
- Colloquy by Weldon Kees
- A Pastiche For Eve by Weldon Kees
- A Musician’s Wife by Weldon Kees
- 1926 by Weldon Kees
- Woods by Wendell Berry
- What We Need Is Here by Wendell Berry
- Water by Wendell Berry
- The Wish to be Generous by Wendell Berry
- The Silence by Wendell Berry
- The Real Work by Wendell Berry
- The peace of wild things by Wendell Berry
- The Man Born to Farming by Wendell Berry
- The Lilies by Wendell Berry
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.