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:
- An Invocation poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Yasmini
- Little Talk
- To Captain H—–d, of the 65th Regiment by Phillis Wheatley
- The Starlight Night poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Ольга Берггольц – Придешь, как приходят слепые
- The Well Of Love by Walter William Safar
- Robert Burns: To Alex. Cunningham, ESQ., Writer: Ellisland, Nithsdale, July 27th, 1788.
- The Storm by Sara Teasdale
- Academic Graffiti by W H Auden
- cocoon_for_a_skeleton.html
- Man And Wife by Robert Lowell
- The Hedger by William Barnes
- The Gardener XIV: I Was Walking by the Road by Rabindranath Tagore
- Михаил Лермонтов – Бартеневой
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 Leaders Of The Crowd by William Butler Yeats
- The Lamentation Of The Old Pensioner by William Butler Yeats
- The Lake Isle Of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats
- The Lady’s Third Song by William Butler Yeats
- The Lady’s Second Song by William Butler Yeats
- The Lady’s First Song by William Butler Yeats
- The Indian Upon God by William Butler Yeats
- The Indian To His Love by William Butler Yeats
- The Hour Before Dawn by William Butler Yeats
- To A Child Dancing In The Wind by William Butler Yeats
- Three Songs To The One Burden by William Butler Yeats
- These Are The Clouds by William Butler Yeats
- The Withering Of The Boughs by William Butler Yeats
- The Wheel by William Butler Yeats
- The Wanderings of Oisin: Book II by William Butler Yeats
- The Wanderings of Oisin: Book I by William Butler Yeats
- The Travail Of Passion by William Butler Yeats
- The Three Monuments by William Butler Yeats
- The Three Beggars by William Butler Yeats
- The Statues 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
