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:
- Lover’s Gifts VIII: There Is Room for You by Rabindranath Tagore
- The Pulling Away by Timothy Cole
- The Flower-Fed Buffaloes by Vachel Lindsay
- Benlomond by Thomas Campbell
- Эмиль Верхарн – Вокруг моего дома
- On One Ignorant And Arrogant (Translated From Owen) by William Cowper
- Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots by Robert Burns
- Алексей Толстой – Рука Алкида тяжела
- Николай Языков – Послание к Ф. И. Иноземцеву (Да сохранит тебя великий русский бог)
- Prologue spoken at the Theatre of Dumfries by Robert Burns
- Follower by Seamus Heaney
- Morning Song by Sylvia Plath
- Ольга Берггольц – Как на озёрном хуторе
- Along the field as we came poem – A. E. Housman
- Владимир Британишский – Дым отечества
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
- Юнна Мориц – Осень
- Юнна Мориц – О жизни, о жизни
- Юнна Мориц – Не вспоминай меня
- Юнна Мориц – На Трафальгарской площади ночной
- Юнна Мориц – На смерть Джульетты
- Юнна Мориц – Мой подвал
- Юнна Мориц – Малиновая кошка
- Юнна Мориц – Лето
- Юнна Мориц – Котик
- Юнна Мориц – Комарово
- Юнна Мориц – Это вьюги хрустящий калач
- Юнна Мориц – Это да, это нет
- Юнна Мориц – Дышать любовью, пить её, как воздух
- Юнна Мориц – Дрожащие губы и скрежет плаща
- Юнна Мориц – Цветок
- Юнна Мориц – Букет котов
- Юнна Мориц – Большой секрет для маленькой компании
- Юнна Мориц – Благолепие света
- Юнна Мориц – Бетани
- Юнна Мориц – Балтийское лето
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