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:
- Ярослав Смеляков – Здравствуй, Пушкин
- Keepe On Your Maske (Version for his Mistress) by William Strode
- Sharing Eve’s Apple poem – John Keats poems
- Two Kopjes by Rudyard Kipling
- Olney Hymn 23: Pleading For And With Youth by William Cowper
- Ballad of the Army Carts by Tu Fu
- An Epitaph poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- A Time to Talk by Robert Frost
- Untitled #1 by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Epistle to Colonel de Peyster by Robert Burns
- was_then.html
- Come In by Robert Frost
- To Dorothy Wellesley by William Butler Yeats
- Вера Звягинцева – Стоишь, не поднимая глаз
- Гавриил Державин – Надежда на бога
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 – В болотах севера Евразии
- Владимир Британишский – Утром 10 мая 1945 года
- Владимир Британишский – Уронили, потеряли
- Владимир Британишский – Урочище
- Владимир Британишский – Унифицированный современный поэт
- Владимир Коркин – Август дозреет яблоком
- Владимир Гиппиус – Закон чего? – закона нет
- Владимир Гиппиус – Узел
- Владимир Гиппиус – Слава
- Владимир Гиппиус – Писать стихи
- Владимир Гиппиус – Иначе, как стихами, говорить
- Владимир Гиппиус – Друг, скажу тебе несказанное
- Владимир Гиппиус стихи: читать все стихотворения, поэмы поэта Владимир Гиппиус – Поэзия на Poetry Monster
- Владимир Гиляровский – Я эоловой арфы струна
- Владимир Гиляровский – Владимирка – большая дорога
- Владимир Гиляровский – Покаюсь
- Владимир Гиляровский – Песня Дона
- Владимир Гиляровский – Нива
- Владимир Гиляровский – На Севере
- Владимир Гиляровский – Кузьма Орел
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
