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 Корнилов – Игра судьбы
- Pan to Artemis poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Lapis Lazuli by William Butler Yeats
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 03 – part 03 by Torquato Tasso
- In the Small Hours by Wole Soyinka
- Владимир Высоцкий – Купола
- Mr. Apollinax by T. S. Eliot
- A Great Time by William Henry Davies
- Sonnet 113: Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind by William Shakespeare
- Creative Branding Solutions – So Why Do I Need a Logo?
- Зинаида Александрова – Давайте, девочки, купаться
- Владимир Маяковский – В Европе кризис (РОСТА №869)
- Goddess poem – Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi poems | Poems and Poetry
- All Night in Savannah the Wind Wrote Poetry by Aberjhani
- Николай Гумилев – Юдифь
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
- The house where I was born (10) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (09) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (08) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (07) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (06) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (05) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (04) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (03) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (02) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The house where I was born (01) by Yves Bonnefoy
- The Hawthorn Tree by Willa Cather
- Street In Packingtown by Willa Sibert Cather
- Spanish Johnny by Willa Sibert Cather
- Poppies on Ludlow Castle by Willa Cather
- Paradox by Willa Cather
- London Roses by Willa Cather
- Passer-By, These Are Words by Yves Bonnefoy
- Arcadian Winter by Willa Cather
- Once A Great Love by Yehuda Amichai
- On Rabbi Kook’s Street by Yehuda Amichai
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
