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:
- Владимир Британишский – Картина
- Владимир Маяковский – Рассказ о Климе, купившем заем, и Прове, не подумавшем о счастье своем
- Sonnet III: Look In Thy Glass, and Tell the Face Thou Viewest by William Shakespeare
- Яков Полонский – Цветок
- Nestling by Mark R Slaughter
- Out At Plough by William Barnes
- Astrophel And Stella-First Song by Sir Philip Sidney
- Anarchy by Satish Verma
- I Have News For You by Tony Hoagland
- A Meeting poem – Alfred Austin
- Endless Time by Rabindranath Tagore
- Celebrate Spring Today poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Bells Ov Alderburnham by William Barnes
- Above The Oxbow by Sylvia Plath
- Let It Be Forgotten by Sara Teasdale
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
- A Terre by Wilfred Owen
- Arms And The Boy by Wilfred Owen
- Asleep by Wilfred Owen
- Exposure by Wilfred Owen
- Futility by Wilfred Owen
- Le Christianisme by Wilfred Owen
- An Imperial Elegy by Wilfred Owen
- But I Was Looking At The Permanent Stars by Wilfred Owen
- I Saw His Round Mouth’s Crimson by Wilfred Owen
- I know The Music (unfinished) by Wilfred Owen
- Hospital Barge At Cerisy by Wilfred Owen
- Has Your Soul Sipped? by Wilfred Owen
- Happiness by Wilfred Owen
- Greater Love by Wilfred Owen
- From My Diary, July 1914 by Wilfred Owen
- At A Calvary Near The Ancre by Wilfred Owen
- Apologia Pro Poemate Meo by Wilfred Owen
- Antaeus: [A Fragment] by Wilfred Owen
- A New Heaven (To-On Active Service) by Wilfred Owen
- 1914 by Wilfred Owen
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
