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:
- My Journey by Vikki Bonyata
- Dews of Silence by Raju Baruah
- The Cremona Violin poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Николай Гербель – Песнь лейб-гвардии уланского полка
- Lallji My Desire
- A Farmhouse on the Wei River by Wang Wei
- Dockery And Son by Philip Larkin
- My Soviet Passport by Vladimir Mayakovsky
- Halloween by Mac Hammond
- The Beäten Path by William Barnes
- Twilight poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Solar Eclipse by Siegfried Sassoon
- Алексей Жемчужников – Всем хлеба
- Омар Хайям – Когда к жизни Любовь меня в мир призвала
- Francis II, King of Naples poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
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
- Rain After a Vaudeville Show by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Portrait of a Boy by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Portrait of a Baby by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Poor Devil! by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Nos Immortales by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Music by Stephen Vincent Benet
- May Morning by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Love in Twilight by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Lonely Burial by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Going Back to School by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Ghosts of a Lunatic Asylum by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Elegy for an Enemy by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Dinner in a Quick Lunch Room by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Dedication by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Colors by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Before an Examination by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Alexander VI Dines with the Cardinal of Capua by Stephen Vincent Benet
- A Minor Poet by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Grammar Lesson by Steve Kowit
- The Convoy by Stephenie Tucker
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
