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:
- Beggarly Heart by Rabindranath Tagore
 - Highway to Happiness by Stacey Chillemi
 - Robert Burns: Epitaph For William Nicol, Of The High School, Edinburgh:
 - Song—The Tear-drop—“Wae is my heart” by Robert Burns
 - Hands by Russell Edson
 - Владимир Орлов – Март
 - Омар Хайям – Чье сердце не горит любовью страстной к милой
 - Robert Burns: The Poet’s Reply To The Threat Of A Censorious Critic: My imprudent lines were answered, very petulantly, by somebody, I believe, a Rev. Mr. Hamilton. In a MS., where I met the answer, I wrote below:-
 - Egotist poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
 - Convalescence poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
 - Lover’s Gifts XLIII: Dying, You Have Left Behind by Rabindranath Tagore
 - Depths
 - The Shepherd’s Brow, Fronting Forked Lightning, Owns poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
 - Love Compared To A Game Of Tables by William Strode
 - Владимир Бенедиктов – Липы
 
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
- Алексей Жемчужников – Почему
 - Алексей Жемчужников – Письмо к юноше о ничтожности
 - Алексей Жемчужников – Пауза
 - Алексей Жемчужников – Памятник Пушкину
 - Алексей Жемчужников – Отголосок девятой симфонии Бетховена
 - Алексей Жемчужников – Осенью в швейцарской деревне
 - Алексей Жемчужников – О, жизнь
 - Алексей Хомяков – Русская песня
 - Алексей Хомяков – Ritterspruch – Richterspruch
 - Алексей Хомяков – Раскаявшейся России
 - Алексей Хомяков – Просьба
 - Алексей Толстой – Войдем сюда; здесь меж руин
 - Алексей Толстой – Вновь растворилась дверь
 - Алексей Толстой – Вeсeнние чувства
 - Алексей Толстой – Василий Шибанов
 - Алексей Толстой – В совести искал я долго обвиненья
 - Алексей Толстой – В колокол, мирно дремавший, с налета тяжелая бомба
 - Алексей Толстой – В альбом (Стрелок, на той поляне)
 - Алексей Толстой – Уж ты нива моя, нивушка
 - Алексей Толстой – Уж ласточки, кружась, над крышей щебетали
 
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.