A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)
1.
Sex, as they harshly call it,
I fell into this morning
at ten o’clock, a drizzling hour
of traffic and wet newspapers.
I thought of him who yesterday
clearly didn’t
turn me to a hot field
ready for plowing,
and longing for that young man
pierced me to the roots
bathing every vein, etc.
All day he appears to me
touchingly desirable,
a prize one could wreck one’s peace for.
I’d call it love if love
didn’t take so many years
but lust too is a jewel
a sweet flower and what
pure happiness to know
all our high-toned questions
breed in a lively animal.
2.
That “old last act”!
And yet sometimes
all seems post coitum triste
and I a mere bystander.
Somebody else is going off,
getting shot to the moon.
Or a moon-race!
Split seconds after
my opposite number lands
I make it–
we lie fainting together
at a crater-edge
heavy as mercury in our moonsuits
till he speaks–
in a different language
yet one I’ve picked up
through cultural exchanges…
we murmur the first moonwords:
Spasibo. Thanks. O.K.

A few random poems:
- Омар Хайям – Люди тлеют в могилах, ничем становясь
- Father by Philip Levine
- The Dispossessed by Sylvia Plath
- Омар Хайям – Если гурия страстно целует в уста
- The Flower of Mending by Vachel Lindsay
- Низами Гянджеви – Не горюй, ибо друг есть
- A Riddle by William Cowper
- My Friends by W. S. Merwin
- Владимир Высоцкий – Вот и настал этот час опять
- The End of the World
- Михаил Кузмин – В гроте Венерином мы горим
- “Take not the Gods to task, for they are wise” poem – Alfred Austin
- Ben Nevis: A Dialogue poem – John Keats poems
- In the Old Age of the Soul poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Алексей Николаевич Толстой – Земля
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
- The Voice by Sara Teasdale
- The Unseen by Sara Teasdale
- The Unchanging by Sara Teasdale
- The Tree by Sara Teasdale
- The Tree Of Song by Sara Teasdale
- The Treasure by Sara Teasdale
- The Storm by Sara Teasdale
- The Star by Sara Teasdale
- The Song Maker by Sara Teasdale
- The Song For Colin by Sara Teasdale
- The Solitary by Sara Teasdale
- The Silent Battle by Sara Teasdale
- The Shrine by Sara Teasdale
- The Sea Wind by Sara Teasdale
- The Sanctuary by Sara Teasdale
- The Rose by Sara Teasdale
- The Rose And The Bee by Sara Teasdale
- The River by Sara Teasdale
- The Return by Sara Teasdale
- The Princess In The Tower by Sara Teasdale
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
Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012) was an American poet, essayist, and feminist.