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:
- Олег Сердобольский – Зимний кот
- about emptiness… by Marina Cecilia Kohon
- Robert Burns: Love For Love:
- Joe Biden, a Ghazal
- Dawned Again
- Respondez! by Walt Whitman
- Alone by Sara Teasdale
- His Holiness the Abbot by Yosa Buson
- Николай Заболоцкий – Баллада Жуковского
- Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Ольга Берггольц – Разговор с соседкой
- I Dream of my Grandmother and Great-Grandmother by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
- Fragment of a Greek Tragedy poem – A. E. Housman
- Sonnet LVII by William Shakespeare
- Evening by Rainer Maria Rilke
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
- A Man, They Made a God by Walid Saba
- A Kind of Life by Stanley Wilkin
- A Gemini’s Hurt by Stephen Allen
- A Dogs Love Is a Never Ending Game by Stacey Chillemi
- A Carta/The Letter by Soaroir de Campos
- I stood musing in a black world by Stephen Crane
- I saw a man pursuing the horizon by Stephen Crane
- I met a seer by Stephen Crane
- I looked here by Stephen Crane
- I explain the silvered passing of a ship at night, by Stephen Crane
- God lay dead in heaven by Stephen Crane
- God fashioned the ship of the world carefully. by Stephen Crane
- Friend, your white beard sweeps the ground by Stephen Crane
- Forth went the candid man by Stephen Crane
- Each small gleam was a voice, by Stephen Crane
- A man went before a strange God by Stephen Crane
- A man toiled on a burning road by Stephen Crane
- A man saw a ball of gold in the sky by Stephen Crane
- A man said to the universe: by Stephen Crane
- A man feared that he might find an assassin by Stephen Crane
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.