A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000)
by Alec Derwent Hope
For every bird there is this last migration;
Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;
With a warm passage to the summer station
Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.
Year after year a speck on the map, divided
By a whole hemisphere, summons her to come;
Season after season, sure and safely guided,
Going away she is also coming home.
And being home, memory becomes a passion
With which she feeds her brood and straws her nest,
Aware of ghosts that haunt the heart’s possession
And exiled love mourning within the breast.
The sands are green with a mirage of valleys;
The palm tree casts a shadow not its own;
Down the long architrave of temple or palace
Blows a cool air from moorland scarps of stone.
And day by day the whisper of love grows stronger;
That delicate voice, more urgent with despair,
Custom and fear constraining her no longer,
Drives her at last on the waste leagues of air.
A vanishing speck in those inane dominions,
Single and frail, uncertain of her place,
Alone in the bright host of her companions,
Lost in the blue unfriendliness of space.
She feels it close now, the appointed season;
The invisible thread is broken as she flies;
Suddenly, without warning, without reason,
The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies.
Try as she will, the trackless world delivers
No way, the wilderness of light no sign;
Immense,complex contours of hills and rivers
Mock her small wisdom with their vast design.
The darkness rises from the eastern valleys,
And the winds buffet her with their hungry breath,
And the great earth, with neither grief nor malice,
Receives the tiny burden of her death.
A few random poems:
- Владимир Высоцкий – Песенка ни про что, или Что случилось в Африке
- The Family Monkey by Russell Edson
- The rainy Pleiads wester poem – A. E. Housman
- Late Light by Philip Levine
- Here the Frailest Leaves of Me. by Walt Whitman
- Far Within Us #1 by Vasko Popa
- On Pilgrimage
- Омар Хайям – Когда ветер у розы подол разорвет
- “Give me October’s meditative haze” poem – Alfred Austin
- Children’s Games by William Carlos Williams
- I know our friendship wil never end by Miraj Patel
- Fruit Leaf Roots Flowers
- Николай Языков – Элегии (Свободен я: уже не трачу)
- Ольга Седакова – Госпожа и служанка
- Английская поэзия. Перси Биши Шелли. Тень Ада. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Satan Broken Loose
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
- Ольга Седакова – Баллада
- Ольга Седакова – Азаровка
- Ольга Седакова – Ангел Реймса
- Ольга Седакова – Актеон
- Ольга Повещенко – Фотограф смотрит в объектив
- Ольга Ермолаева – За Волгой, ударившись озем
- Ольга Ермолаева – Я так же, как ты, от стыда опускаю ресницы
- Ольга Ермолаева – Всю эту печаль невозможно вместить целиком
- Ольга Ермолаева – Вот сойдешь с ума и станешь Юрия
- Ольга Ермолаева – В кирзовых сапогах скользить по горной глине
- Ольга Ермолаева – Ты где летал, мой падающий с Фанских гор
- Ольга Ермолаева – Симферопольский скорый
- Ольга Ермолаева – Псевдоготика для русских романтических сердец
- Ольга Ермолаева – Просила тебя у мертвой и выпросила у мертвой
- Ольга Ермолаева – Напиши мне стишок
- Ольга Ермолаева – На каблуках-то и то к голове удалой
- Ольга Ермолаева – Мир неприбран, подозрителен
- Ольга Ермолаева – Когда распрямлюсь, озирая работу мою
- Ольга Ермолаева – Герасим Грачевник
- Ольга Ермолаева – Этот позорный ужас
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
Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) was an Australian poet and essayist known for his satirical slant. He was also a critic, teacher and academic.