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:
- Омар Хайям – Благородство страданием, друг, рождено
- Robin Hood And The Butcher poem – Andrew Lang poems
- On His Deceased Wife poem – John Milton poems
- Maple by Robert Frost
- Николай Рубцов – Зимняя песня
- The Song Of The Kasak poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Oh Unforgotten And Only Lover
- Владимир Высоцкий – Не дыми, голова трещит
- Epitaphs Translated From Chiabrera by William Wordsworth
- Bertie the Goldfish by Ross D Tyler
- Robert Burns: Thou Hast Left Me Ever, Jamie:
- Song II: Have No Thought for Tomorrow by William Morris
- Robert Burns: Epistle To Mrs. Scott: Gudewife of Wauchope-House, Roxburghshire.
- Владимир Костров – Душа, не кайся и не майся
- Yours & Mine poem – Alice Fulton poems | Poetry Monster
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
- Sixteen Dead Men by William Butler Yeats
- Shepherd And Goatherd by William Butler Yeats
- September 1913 by William Butler Yeats
- Sailing To Byzantium by William Butler Yeats
- Running To Paradise by William Butler Yeats
- Roger Casement by William Butler Yeats
- Responsibilities; Introduction by William Butler Yeats
- The Hosting Of The Sidhe by William Butler Yeats
- The Host Of The Air by William Butler Yeats
- The Heart Of The Woman by William Butler Yeats
- The Hawk by William Butler Yeats
- The Happy Townland by William Butler Yeats
- The Gyres by William Butler Yeats
- The Grey Rock by William Butler Yeats
- The Ghost Of Roger Casement by William Butler Yeats
- The Fool By The Roadside by William Butler Yeats
- The Folly Of Being Comforted by William Butler Yeats
- The Fisherman by William Butler Yeats
- The Fish by William Butler Yeats
- The Fiddler Of Dooney 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
