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:
- Владимир Набоков – Воскресение мёртвых
- The Wanderings of Oisin: Book II by William Butler Yeats
- Blank Joy by Rainer Maria Rilke
- The Lads in Their Hundreds poem – A. E. Housman
- Валерий Брюсов – После сенокоса
- In A Garden by Sara Teasdale
- Love Of Life poem – Alfred Austin
- Heroic Simile by Robert Hass
- Омар Хайям – Листья дерева жизни, отпущенной мне
- After Sunset by William Allingham
- Владимир Маяковский – Тамара и демон
- Robert Burns: On The Birth Of A Posthumous Child: Born in peculiar circumstances of family distress.
- Robert Burns: Adam Armour’s Prayer:
- Sappho Redivivus: A Fragment by Robert Burns
- Robert Burns: The Laddie’s Dear Sel’:
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
- Ballade Of Dead Ladies poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Cleopatra’s Needle poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Blind Love poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Autumn poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Aucassin poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Amoureuse poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of His Books poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Dream poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Dead Ladies poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Dead Cities poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Cleopatra’s Needle poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Bookworm poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Blind Love poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Autumn poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Aucassin poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Against The Jesuits poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Auld Maitland poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Annan Water poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Alison Gross poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Aesop poem – Andrew Lang poems
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.