by Agha Shahid Ali
First, grant me my sense of history:
I did it for posterity,
for kindergarten teachers
and a clear moral:
Little girls shouldn’t wander off
in search of strange flowers,
and they mustn’t speak to strangers.
And then grant me my generous sense of plot:
Couldn’t I have gobbled her up
right there in the jungle?
Why did I ask her where her grandma lived?
As if I, a forest-dweller,
didn’t know of the cottage
under the three oak trees
and the old woman lived there
all alone?
As if I couldn’t have swallowed her years before?
And you may call me the Big Bad Wolf,
now my only reputation.
But I was no child-molester
though you’ll agree she was pretty.
And the huntsman:
Was I sleeping while he snipped
my thick black fur
and filled me with garbage and stones?
I ran with that weight and fell down,
simply so children could laugh
at the noise of the stones
cutting through my belly,
at the garbage spilling out
with a perfect sense of timing,
just when the tale
should have come to an end.
A Walk Through the Yellow Pages
Copyright ©:
1987, SUN-Gemini Press
A few random poems:
- Writing to Onegin by Ruth Padel
- The Gamblers by Vachel Lindsay
- Олег Бундур – Однажды на даче
- William Gilmore Simms – William Gilmore Simms
- Mates
- Олег Бундур – Дождь
- Sonnet 105: Let not my love be called idolatry by William Shakespeare
- Олег Бундур – Полёт
- Sorry by Tom Mukasa
- Жан де Лафонтен – Безумец и Мудрец
- Io v’amo sol perche (I Love You Simply Because) by Torquato Tasso
- As Dies The Year poem – Alfred Austin
- twinkletoes.html
- Иван Варавва – Соловей на веточке
- To The Small Celandine by William Wordsworth
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
- To What Serves Mortal Beauty? poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- To Seem The Stranger Lies My Lot, My Life poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- To R. B. poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- To His Watch poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- To Him Who Ever Thought with Love of Me poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- To a Young Child poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord, If I Contend poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Thee, God, I Come from poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Wreck Of The Deutschland poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Woodlark poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Times Are Nightfall poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Starlight Night poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Soldier poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Silver Jubilee poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Shepherd’s Brow, Fronting Forked Lightning, Owns poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Sea Took Pity poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Sea And The Skylark poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The May Magnificat poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Loss Of The Eurydice poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
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
