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:
- DOWNHILL JOURNEY by Satish Verma
- Огюст Барбье – Собачий пир
- Couplet 11 poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Kyrenaikos
- Федор Сологуб – Краем прибережной кручи
- City of Orgies. by Walt Whitman
- Beach Glass poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- Love Of Life poem – Alfred Austin
- Book Third [Residence at Cambridge] by William Wordsworth
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Н. Ф. Щербине
- The Crystal Gazer by Sara Teasdale
- Альфред де Мюссе – Все мною предано забвенью
- Василий Жуковский – На первое отречение от престола Бонапарте
- The Swimmer
- Robert Burns: Grace Before And After Meat :
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
- June Dreams, In January by Sidney Lanier
- Jones’s Porvate Argyment by Sidney Lanier
- Ireland. by Sidney Lanier
- In The Foam. by Sidney Lanier
- In Absence. by Sidney Lanier
- Hymns Of The Marshes. by Sidney Lanier
- From The Flats. by Sidney Lanier
- Corn by Sidney Lanier
- Control by Sidney Lanier
- Clover by Sidney Lanier
- Barnacles by Sidney Lanier
- Baby Charley. by Sidney Lanier
- At First. To Charlotte Cushman. by Sidney Lanier
- An Evening Song. by Sidney Lanier
- Acknowledgment. by Sidney Lanier
- A Sunrise Song. by Sidney Lanier
- A Song Of The Future. by Sidney Lanier
- A Song Of Eternity In Time by Sidney Lanier
- A Sea-Shore Grave. To M. J. L. by Sidney Lanier
- A Florida Sunday. by Sidney Lanier
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
