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:
- Song—O can ye Labour Lea? by Robert Burns
- Кондратий Рылеев – Людмила
- The Clime Of My Birth by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- The Dream by W H Auden
- Eudaemonism In A Senryu Novel
- Authorship by Rabindranath Tagore
- There Is No Breeze To Cool The Heat Of Love
- What Hidden Sweetness Is There by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Наталья Шевченко – Привилегия
- Come In by Robert Frost
- Two Songs By Sitara Of Kashmir
- What is Poetry? by Mark Olynyk
- Yasin Khan
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: 83. Dip down upon the northern shore poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Владимир Набоков – Воскресение мёртвых
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 Британишский – Феодосия, Керчь, Таганрог
- Владимир Британишский – Эх, из огня да в полымя
- Владимир Британишский – Этот вечер
- Владимир Британишский – Есть добрая, есть и дурная слава
- Владимир Британишский – Еретик
- Владимир Британишский – Емуртла
- Владимир Британишский – Екатеринбургский модерн
- Владимир Британишский – Единственный шаман, которого я видел
- Владимир Британишский – Дым отечества
- Владимир Британишский – Двуединство души
- Владимир Британишский – Другу
- Владимир Британишский – Дождик
- Владимир Британишский – Дороги
- Владимир Британишский – Дом (Время ведь с годами ведь)
- Владимир Британишский – Дом, как бог
- Владимир Британишский – Добравшись до водораздела
- Владимир Британишский – Девятое января
- Владимир Британишский – Державин был солдат
- Владимир Британишский – Дали ему дивизию
- Владимир Британишский – Далекая скрипка
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
