I would like to swim in the Atlantic,
to swim with someone who understood
why my fear of drowning plays less dire
than my fear of bones, walking the ocean floor.
I would like to sync my stroke with a beloved.
I’d like to stand on deck on a boat
and jump in the sea and say, follow me,
and know you would. The sea is cold
and it’s deep, too, I’d joke,
standing at the edge of the boat’s bow.
A wind breathes across the sea,
joining gently the edges of time.
With a dog paddling behind me,
I want to crawl across the water
without thinking about a future.
I have set my eyes upon the shore
and I hold you there—steady, in focus—
but let you go when, from below,
a voice breaks to the surface.
A few random poems:
- Conversation 4: On Place by Rosmarie Waldrop
- The People by William Butler Yeats
- Grand Slam Night poem – A. D. Winans poems | Poetry Monster
- UNREADABLE by Satish Verma
- Surprised By Joy by William Wordsworth
- Низами Гянджеви – Хмельное счастье мое очнется
- Late September poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Владимир Маяковский – Четвертый вывоз
- The Usurpation
- Mornèn by William Barnes
- Villonaud for This Yule poem – Ezra Pound poems
- The Ring of Stars by Robert Desnos
- Ring Out Your Bells by Sir Philip Sidney
- Ralph to Mary poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Шекспир – У бедной музы красок больше нет – Сонет 103
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
- Consider This And In Our Time by W H Auden
- The Common Life by W H Auden
- Cocaine Lil and Morphine Sue by W H Auden
- Christmas Oratio by W H Auden
- Carry Her Over the Water by W H Auden
- Canzone by W H Auden
- Calypso by W H Auden
- Base Words Are Uttered by W H Auden
- Autumn Song by W H Auden
- August 1968 by W H Auden
- Atlantis by W H Auden
- As I Walked Out One Evening by W. H. Auden
- As We Like It by W H Auden
- As the poets have mournfully sung by W H Auden
- Are You There? by W H Auden
- After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics by W. H. Auden
- Academic Graffiti by W H Auden
- A Walk After Dark by W H Auden
- A New Year Greeting by W H Auden
- Continual Conversation With A Silent Man by Wallace Stevens
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.