A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)
1.
A conversation begins
with a lie. and each
speaker of the so-called common language feels
the ice-floe split, the drift apart
as if powerless, as if up against
a force of nature
A poem can being
with a lie. And be torn up.
A conversation has other laws
recharges itself with its own
false energy, Cannot be torn
up. Infiltrates our blood. Repeats itself.
Inscribes with its unreturning stylus
the isolation it denies.
2.
The classical music station
playing hour upon hour in the apartment
the picking up and picking up
and again picking up the telephone
The syllables uttering
the old script over and over
The loneliness of the liar
living in the formal network of the lie
twisting the dials to drown the terror
beneath the unsaid word
3.
The technology of silence
The rituals, etiquette
the blurring of terms
silence not absence
of words or music or even
raw sounds
Silence can be a plan
rigorously executed
the blueprint of a life
It is a presence
it has a history a form
Do not confuse it
with any kind of absence
4.
How calm, how inoffensive these words
begin to seem to me
though begun in grief and anger
Can I break through this film of the abstract
without wounding myself or you
there is enough pain here
This is why the classical of the jazz music station plays?
to give a ground of meaning to our pain?
5.
The silence strips bare:
In Dreyer’s Passion of Joan
Falconetti’s face, hair shorn, a great geography
mutely surveyed by the camera
If there were a poetry where this could happen
not as blank space or as words
stretched like skin over meaningsof a night through which two people
have talked till dawn.
6.
The scream
of an illegitimate voice
It has ceased to hear itself, therefore
it asks itself
How do I exist?
This was the silence I wanted to break in you
I had questions but you would not answer
I had answers but you could not use them
The is useless to you and perhaps to others
7.
It was an old theme even for me:
Language cannot do everything-
chalk it on the walls where the dead poets
lie in their mausoleums
If at the will of the poet the poem
could turn into a thing
a granite flank laid bare, a lifted head
alight with dew
If it could simply look you in the face
with naked eyeballs, not letting you turn
till you, and I who long to make this thing,
were finally clarified together in its stare
8.
No. Let me have this dust,
these pale clouds dourly lingering, these words
moving with ferocious accuracy
like the blind child’s fingers
or the newborn infant’s mouth
violent with hunger
No one can give me, I have long ago
taken this method
whether of bran pouring from the loose-woven sack
or of the bunsen-flame turned low and blue
If from time to time I envy
the pure annunciation to the eye
the visio beatifica
if from time to time I long to turn
like the Eleusinian hierophant
holding up a single ear of grain
for the return to the concrete and everlasting world
what in fact I keep choosing
are these words, these whispers, conversations
from which time after time the truth breaks moist and green.
A few random poems:
- The Last Rhyme of True Thomas by Rudyard Kipling
- Кондратий Рылеев – Меня пленяли наши деды
- Lincoln by Vachel Lindsay
- Олег Бундур – Летняя гроза
- A Faery’s Lament poem – Ysabelle Moriarty poems | Poetry Monster
- Epistle To John Hamilton Reynolds poem – John Keats poems
- You must once
- Sonnet LXXI by William Shakespeare
- Duncan Gray by Robert Burns
- Astrophel and Stella: LXXI by Sir Philip Sidney
- On An Old Woman (From The Greek) by William Cowper
- Огюст Барбье – Жертвы
- The Everlasting Voices by William Butler Yeats
- The Invisible by Rixa White
- Confession by Vasishta Sharma Gudi
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
- Владимир Степанов – Хлопотунья
- Владимир Степанов – Воробей
- Владимир Степанов – Волнушки
- Владимир Степанов – Весёлый транспорт
- Владимир Степанов – В лесу осиновом
- Владимир Степанов – Утёнок (Буква У)
- Владимир Степанов – Угадай-ка, это кто?
- Владимир Степанов – Тула-город мастеров
- Владимир Степанов – Телефон (Буква Т)
- Владимир Степанов – Суворовец
- Владимир Степанов – Следом за летом осень
- Владимир Степанов – Синичка в электричке
- Владимир Степанов – Шарик (Буква Ш)
- Владимир Степанов – Рукавицы для лисицы
- Владимир Степанов – Робот (Буква Р)
- Владимир Степанов – Рассказ оружейника
- Владимир Степанов – Про меня и муравья
- Владимир Степанов – Праздник сентября
- Владимир Степанов – Потемнели ветви
- Владимир Степанов – Подберёзовик и подосиновик
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.