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:
- Forbidden Fruit by Michael Lally
- Алексей Плещеев – Весна (Песни жаворонков снова)
- Don’t Need Anything by Pat Mullan
- How I saved Planet Earth by Raj Arumugam
- Robert Burns: Address To The Deil:
- Степан Щипачев – Свет звезды
- Ballad on Mr. Heron’s Election—No. 4 by Robert Burns
- For Birds by Nithin Purple
- Paper Boats by Rabindranath Tagore
- Meeting with Te Rauparaha by Michael O’Leary
- A Watch-String by William Strode
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Песнь соловья
- Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day poem – Alexander Pope
- Others, I Am Not the First poem – A. E. Housman
- If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem by Yehuda Amichai
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
- Валерий Брюсов – Испанская песенка
- Валерий Брюсов – Искушение
- Валерий Брюсов – Искатель
- Валерий Брюсов – Инкогнито
- Валерий Брюсов – In hас lackimarum valle (в этой долине слез )
- Валерий Брюсов – Il bacio
- Валерий Брюсов – Игорю Северянину (Строя струны лиры клирной)
- Валерий Брюсов – Идут года. Но с прежней страстью
- Валерий Брюсов – Идеал
- Валерий Брюсов – И вдруг все станет так понятно
- Валерий Брюсов – И. Туманьяну надпись на книге (Да будет праведно возмездие)
- Валерий Брюсов – И снова давние картины
- Валерий Брюсов – И снова дрожат они, грезы бессильные
- Валерий Брюсов – И он взглянул, и ты уснула, и он ушел, и умер день
- Валерий Брюсов – И небо и серое море
- Валерий Брюсов – Грядущие гунны
- Валерий Брюсов – Грустный вечер
- Валерий Брюсов – Гребцы триремы
- Валерий Брюсов – Городу дифирамб
- Валерий Брюсов – Город женщин
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.