A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)
My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.
They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.
I want you to see this before I leave:
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said:
my bleeding is under control
A red plant in a cemetary of plastic wreaths.
A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say: those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.
To do something very common, in my own way.
A few random poems:
- Владимир Степанов – Хлопотунья
- A Work Of Artifice by Marge Piercy
- Огюст Барбье – Идол
- Владимир Маяковский – Почему нет помощи от Румынии (Главполитпросвет №327)
- Sonnet 72: O, lest the world should task you to recite by William Shakespeare
- Федор Сологуб – Я иду от дома к дому
- Notice by Steve Kowit
- Sonnet 27: Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet Viii
- Secrecy Protested. by Thomas Carew
- Fancy
- Maenad by Sylvia Plath
- Владимир Степанов – Эскимос (Буква Э)
- Fragment on Sensibility by Robert Burns
- Валерий Брюсов – К.Д. Бальмонту (Вечно вольный, вечно юный)
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
- Afridi Love
- Adoration
- Whispering In Wattle Boughs
- Thoras Song Ashtaroth
- The Swimmer
- The Sick Stockrider
- The Last Leap
- Gone
- An Exiles Farewell
- A Song Of Autumn
- A Dedication
- Medical Ethics
- Vain
- Myself
- My Heritage
- Miserimus
- Memory
- Karazah Karl
- Judith
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.