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:
- Swallows by Richard Schiffman
- Robert Burns: Epigram On Mr. James Gracie:
- On An Eclipse Of The Moon by Walter Savage Landor
- Николай Глазков – Быть хочешь постоянно пьяным
- Robert Burns: Lines To An Old Sweetheart:
- Lying on a Slab by Satish Verma
- An Essay on Man: Epistle II poem – Alexander Pope
- Владимир Маяковский – Дурацкий сон (РОСТА №234)
- The Emigrant by Ndue Ukaj
- A Parsonage In Oxfordshire by William Wordsworth
- The Meäd In June by William Barnes
- For The Anniversary Of John Keats’ Death by Sara Teasdale
- Books poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- The (REAL) Tale of the Tortoise and the Hare by Ross D Tyler
- Robert Burns: The Winter It Is Past:
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
- Love Sonnet LIV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Sonnet Of Motherhood XXXI poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Sonnet Of Motherhood XXVII poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Sonnet Of Motherhood XXIX poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Sonnet Of Motherhood XXIV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Sonnet Of Motherhood XL poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Sonnet Of Motherhood X poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Sonnet Of Motherhood VIII poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Sonnet Of Motherhood VI poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Memory poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Love Sonnet XXXV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Love Sonnet XXVIII poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Love Sonnet XXVI poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Love Sonnet XXIX poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Love Sonnet XXI poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Love Sonnet XVII poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Love Sonnet XV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Love Sonnet XLIX poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Love Sonnet XLIV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Love Sonnet XLII poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
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
