by Ai
We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don’t tell me, I say. I don’t want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life
is a chain of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,
and beginning to rise heavenward
in their confirmation dresses,
like white helium balloons,
the wreathes of flowers on their heads spinning,
and above all that,
that’s where I’m floating,
and that’s what it’s like
only ten times clearer,
ten times more horrible.
Could anyone alive survive it?
A few random poems:
- For What As Easy by W H Auden
- In Memoriam
- The Gate by Marie Howe
- A Theory Of Prosody by Philip Levine
- The Triumph Of Achilles by Paul Celan
- Алишер Навои – Осрамился я
- Maktoob
- National Trust by Tony Harrison
- The blanket is same always by Neelam Sinha
- Far Within Us #6 by Vasko Popa
- a_poem.html
- A Slight Change by Rixa White
- The Moon And The Yew Tree by Sylvia Plath
- A Birthday Song. To S. G. by Sidney Lanier
- Степан Щипачев – Атака
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
- Низами Гянджеви – Я долго шел по лугу лет
- Низами Гянджеви – Я бросил молодость в пожар моей любви
- Низами Гянджеви – Хмельное счастье мое очнется
- Низами Гянджеви – Встань, виночерпий, не ленись
- Низами Гянджеви – Влюбленных порицают все
- Низами Гянджеви – В привычке сердца воровать ты
- Низами Гянджеви – В ночи я знаю
- Низами Гянджеви – Увы, на этой лужайке, где согнут страстью я,
- Низами Гянджеви – Ты видишь: я твой давний друг
- Низами Гянджеви – Ты рукой мне сжала сердце
- Низами Гянджеви – Тропы мне ни в духан, ни к богу нету
- Низами Гянджеви – Там, где лик ты светлый явишь
- Низами Гянджеви – Спустилась ночь
- Низами Гянджеви – Спать не стоит
- Низами Гянджеви – Слышишь, звякнул бубенцами
- Низами Гянджеви – Семь красавиц
- Низами Гянджеви – Розу пологом колючим
- Низами Гянджеви – Расступился черный мускус
- Низами Гянджеви – Ради встречи с тобой я до края земли дошел
- Низами Гянджеви – Пускай охотится на всех газелеоких
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