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 Маяковский – Переворот в Германии (Роста №42)
- Владимир Маяковский – Ужасающая фамильярность
- Валерий Брюсов – К портрету К.Д. Бальмонта
- Half-Ballad of Waterval by Rudyard Kipling
- Владимир Высоцкий – Вы были у Беллы
- Man’s Knowledge – Ingorance in the Mysteries of God by William Drummond
- Оливер Голдсмит – Оленья туша
- The Bangle Sellers by Sarojini Naidu
- Curtis by Susan King Saunders
- The Princess In The Tower by Sara Teasdale
- A Hymn To Venus by Sappho
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 02 – part 03 by Torquato Tasso
- Song—Anna, thy Charms by Robert Burns
- One Year by Sharon Olds
- Wednesday by Marvin Bell
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 Seven Sisters by William Wordsworth
- The Sailor’s Mother by William Wordsworth
- The Russian Fugitive by William Wordsworth
- The Reverie of Poor Susan by William Wordsworth
- The Redbreast Chasing The Butterfly by William Wordsworth
- The Prioress’s Tale [from Chaucer] by William Wordsworth
- The Primrose of the Rock by William Wordsworth
- The Power of Armies is a Visible Thing by William Wordsworth
- The Pet-Lamb by William Wordsworth
- The Passing of the Elder Bards by William Wordsworth
- The Old Cumberland Beggar by William Wordsworth
- The Oak Of Guernica Supposed Address To The Same by William Wordsworth
- The Morning Of The Day Appointed For A General Thanksgiving. January 18, 1816 by William Wordsworth
- The King Of Sweden by William Wordsworth
- The Idle Shepherd Boys by William Wordsworth
- The Horn Of Egremont Castle by William Wordsworth
- The Highland Broach by William Wordsworth
- The Happy Warrior by William Wordsworth
- The Green Linnet by William Wordsworth
- The Germans On The Heighs Of Hochheim by William Wordsworth
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
