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:
- Househunting by Mike Yuan
- The Actor by Preeth Nambiar
- By the Dusk – Ao Entardecer by Soaroir de Campos
- Владимир Маяковский – Сейчас беднее нас нет… (РОСТА №742)
- The Conspiracy by Robert Creeley
- Степан Щипачев – Зрение
- Stubborn by Roland Flint
- What am I, After All? by Walt Whitman
- Borow
- A Sermon
- The Distant Winter by Philip Levine
- On Your Midnight Pallet Lying poem – A. E. Housman
- Olney Hymn 24: Prayer For Children by William Cowper
- A CANTICLE TO APOLLO by Robert Herrick
- A Thing of Beauty (Endymion) poem – John Keats poems
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
- On Your Midnight Pallet Lying poem – A. E. Housman
- On Your Midnight Pallet Lying poem – A. E. Housman
- On Wenlock Edge The Wood’s In Trouble poem – A. E. Housman
- On Wenlock Edge The Wood’s In Trouble poem – A. E. Housman
- On the Idle Hill of Summer poem – A. E. Housman
- On Moonlit Heath and Lonesome Bank poem – A. E. Housman
- On Moonlit Heath and Lonesome Bank poem – A. E. Housman
- Oh Who Is That Young Sinner poem – A. E. Housman
- Oh, when I was in love with you poem – A. E. Housman
- Oh Stay At Home, My Lad poem – A. E. Housman
- Oh Stay At Home, My Lad poem – A. E. Housman
- Oh, see how thick the goldcup flowers poem – A. E. Housman
- Oh, see how thick the goldcup flowers poem – A. E. Housman
- Oh fair enough are sky and plain poem – A. E. Housman
- Oh fair enough are sky and plain poem – A. E. Housman
- O Why Do You Walk poem – A. E. Housman
- Now Hollow Fires Burn Out to Black poem – Alfred Edward Housman
- Now Hollow Fires Burn Out to Black poem – Alfred Edward Housman
- March poem – A. E. Housman
- March poem – A. E. Housman
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
