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:
- The Ladies by Rudyard Kipling
- The Editor’s Guests by Will McKendree Carleton
- Song Of The Furies
- Olney Hymn 4: Jehovah-Nissi: The Lord My Banner by William Cowper
- Аля Кудряшева – Помнишь, как это
- The Passing Cloud by Rashmi Sreekumar
- Ballade Of The Midnight Forest poem – Andrew Lang poems
- You Smile Upon Your Friend To-Day poem – A. E. Housman
- Only In Sleep by Sara Teasdale
- Orlando Furioso Canto 1 by Ludovico Ariosto
- Poema LX, El albergue by Mara Romero Torres
- Sonnet CXXV by William Shakespeare
- Sabbath, My Love poem – Yehudah ha-Levi poems | Poetry Monster
- Алексей Николаевич Толстой – Семик
- Виктор Шамонин-Версенев – Заяц-врун
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
- Address To The Scholars Of The Village School Of — by William Wordsworth
- Address To Kilchurn Castle, Upon Loch Awe by William Wordsworth
- Address To A Child During A Boisterous Winter By My Sister by William Wordsworth
- A Wren’s Nest by William Wordsworth
- A Whirl-Blast From Behind The Hill by William Wordsworth
- A Prophecy. February 1807 by William Wordsworth
- A Night Thought by William Wordsworth
- A Night-Piece by William Wordsworth
- A Narrow Girdle Of Rough Stones And Crags, by William Wordsworth
- A Flower Garden At Coleorton Hall, Leicestershire. by William Wordsworth
- A Farewell by William Wordsworth
- A Character by William Wordsworth
- Upon a Lady’s Fall Over a Stile, Gotten by Running From Her Love by William Wycherley
- To his Indifferent Mistress by William Wycherley
- The Poor Lover to His Rich Mistress about to Marry His Coxcombly Rival by William Wycherley
- Sleep and Death by William Wycherley
- On a Sea Fight, Which the Author was in, Betwixt the English and Dutch by William Wycherley
- Love and Wine by William Wycherley
- In Praise of Laziness by William Wycherley
- Drinking-Song, A. To a Formal, Proud, Sober Coxcomb by William Wycherley
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
