Because a razor cuts across a frame of film,
I wince, squinting my eye,
and because my day needs assembly
to make sense of the scenes anyway,
making a story from some pieces of truth, I go
outside to gather those pieces.
Thousands of moments spooling out
frames of mistakes in my day.
As if anyone’s to blame,
as if anyone could interpret the colliding
images, again and again, dragging
my imagination behind me,
I begin assembling.
I don’t know anything, so I seek
directions, following the path
of ants from your palm, out
the apartment door to
a beach. Is this where I’m
supposed to ask if my hands on you
bend some light around shade? Maybe
I’m not ready for the answer. They say
art imitates what we can sculpt or write
or just see when we turn ourselves
inside out. I can’t turn my eye away
from the sight of failure. The rain pelts rooftops.
I listen to the song, thinking
when the sun comes back,
beating down the door
in my head, I’ll salvage whatever sits
still long enough for me to render,
before anyone knows what really happened.
A few random poems:
- Владимир Костров – Душа, не кайся и не майся
- Владимир Высоцкий – Космонавту Ю. Гагарину
- Epistle to Dr. Blacklock by Robert Burns
- Od’d(ode) to Whitey Bulger by Susan King Saunders
- The Gamblers by Vachel Lindsay
- run home, run home butterfly by Raj Arumugam
- Blackberrying by Sylvia Plath
- Gorgeous Surfaces by Thomas Lux
- There is a Community of Spirit by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Карл Сэндберг – Анекдот о цикуте для двух афинян
- You Must n’t Swim… by Rudyard Kipling
- I Am There by Mahmoud Darwish
- One Viceroy Resigns by Rudyard Kipling
- Владимир Маяковский – Дожмем! В России буржуазия побеждена… (РОСТА №841)
- Farmers Market by Mary TallMountain
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
- Николай Гумилев – Лесной пожар
- Николай Гумилев – Леопарди (Набросок)
- Николай Гумилев – Леонард
- Николай Гумилев – Лаос
- Николай Гумилев – Куранты любви
- Николай Гумилев – Крыса
- Николай Гумилев – Крест
- Николай Гумилев – Корабль
- Николай Гумилев – Командиру 5-го Александровского полка
- Николай Гумилев – Колокол
- Николай Гумилев – Когда я был влюблен
- Николай Гумилев – Когда спокойно так и равнодушно мы
- Николай Гумилев – Ключ в лесу
- Николай Гумилев – Кенгуру
- Николай Гумилев – Кармен худа, коричневатый
- Николай Гумилев – Капитаны
- Николай Гумилев – Канцона вторая
- Николай Гумилев – Канцона (Лучшая музыка в мире)
- Николай Гумилев – Канцона (Бывает в жизни человека)
- Николай Гумилев – Какою музыкой мой слух взволнован
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
A. Van Jordan, born 1965 in Akron, Ohio, USA, is a contemporary American poet and the author of four important collections: Rise, which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award (Tia Chucha Press, 2001); M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, (2005), which was listed as one the Best Books of 2005 by the London Times; Quantum Lyrics, (W.W. Norton, 2007); and The Cineaste (W.W. Norton,, 2013). Jordan has been awarded a Whiting Writers Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize.