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:
- Academic Graffiti by W H Auden
- The Devil Outwitted by William Somervile
- Composed By The Sea-Side, Near Calais, August 1802 by William Wordsworth
- The Tale of the Tiger-Tree by Vachel Lindsay
- Алишер Навои – О, мне бы крылья
- Maya by Rabindranath Tagore
- Sonnet (X) : In the search of the physical immortality by Neelam Sinha
- Олег Бундур – Вид с задней парты
- 12 Surefire Brainstorming Techniques
- София Парнок – Тихо плачу и пою
- Give Me Back My Rags #11 by Vasko Popa
- The Bear, The Fire, And The Snow by Shel Silverstein
- Book Second [School-Time Continued] by William Wordsworth
- Олег Чупров – Богатство
- To a Gentleman and Lady on the Death of the Lady’s Brother and Sister by Phillis Wheatley
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
- Imitated From The Japanese by William Butler Yeats
- I Am Of Ireland by William Butler Yeats
- Hound Voice by William Butler Yeats
- His Phoenix by William Butler Yeats
- His Dream by William Butler Yeats
- His Confidence by William Butler Yeats
- His Bargain by William Butler Yeats
- High Talk by William Butler Yeats
- Her Vision In The Wood by William Butler Yeats
- Her Triumph by William Butler Yeats
- Her Praise by William Butler Yeats
- Her Dream by William Butler Yeats
- Her Anxiety by William Butler Yeats
- He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead by William Butler Yeats
- He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven by William Butler Yeats
- He Thinks Of Those Who Have Spoken Evil Of His Beloved by William Butler Yeats
- He Tells Of The Perfect Beauty by William Butler Yeats
- He Tells Of A Valley Full Of Lovers by William Butler Yeats
- The Cat And The Moon by William Butler Yeats
- The Cap And Bells by William Butler Yeats
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
