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:
- Алексей Плещеев – Знакомые звуки, чудесные звуки
- meeting.html
- The Heir Of Lynne poem – Andrew Lang poems
- How Long by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Валерий Брюсов – Еврейским девушкам
- Владимир Маяковский – Думай об армии (РОСТА №873)
- The Rose That Grew From Concrete by Tupac Shakur
- Robert Burns: Burlesque Lament For The Absence Of William Creech, Publisher:
- Lying Down by Robert Desnos
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Привет старому 1858-му году
- Forgotten by Priya Prithviraj
- Владимир Корнилов – Обещание
- How to Write Creative Non-fiction
- Анатолий Жигулин – Кукует поздняя кукушка
- Think Of It Not, Sweet One poem – John Keats poems
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 French Revolution as it appeared to Enthusiasts by William Wordsworth
- The French Army In Russia, 1812-13 by William Wordsworth
- The French And the Spanish Guerillas by William Wordsworth
- The Fountain by William Wordsworth
- The Forsaken by William Wordsworth
- The Force Of Prayer, Or, The Founding Of Bolton, A Tradition by William Wordsworth
- The Farmer Of Tilsbury Vale by William Wordsworth
- The Fairest, Brightest, Hues Of Ether Fade by William Wordsworth
- The Emigrant Mother by William Wordsworth
- The Eagle and the Dove by William Wordsworth
- The Danish Boy by William Wordsworth
- The Cottager To Her Infant by William Wordsworth
- The Complaint Of A Forsaken Indian Woman by William Wordsworth
- The Childless Father by William Wordsworth
- The Brothers by William Wordsworth
- The Birth Of Love by William Wordsworth
- The Affliction Of Margaret by William Wordsworth
- Surprised By Joy by William Wordsworth
- Stray Pleasures by William Wordsworth
- Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known 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
