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:
- I Salute You , O Women! by Ms Tabzeer Yaseen
- Николай Тихонов – Как след от весла
- Proud Word You Never Spoke by Walter Savage Landor
- You Know Where You Did Despise poem – Alexander Pope
- The Sparrow Club by William Barnes
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Мой сад
- The Double Vision Of Michael Robartes by William Butler Yeats
- Sonnet CXLI by William Shakespeare
- Silver Trails by Satish Verma
- Sleep
- Written In Cananore
- Robert Burns: Extempore On Some Commemorations Of Thomson:
- Psalm 08 poem – John Milton poems
- The Arrival Of The Bee Box by Sylvia Plath
- Яков Полонский – По горам две хмурых тучи
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
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Праздник на биваке
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Пожар
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Потоки
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Пируя праздник возвращенья
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Певец
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Песнь соловья
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Пещеры Кизиль-коба
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Переход
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Переселение
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Отзыв на вызов
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Звездочет
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Знакомое место
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Желания
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Затмение
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Запретный плод
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Южная ночь
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Я знаю, люблю я бесплодно
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Я. П. Полонскому
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Христианские мысли перед битвами
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Вьющееся растение
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
