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:
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- Владимир Маяковский – Голодные! Пан Украину грабит… (РОСТА №106)
- Main to piya say naina lada aayi ray poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- If Only
- Limbo by Seamus Heaney
- Джон Китс – Девчонка из Девона
- Robert Burns: The Deil’s Awa Wi’ The Exciseman:
- Astrophel and Stella: LXXI by Sir Philip Sidney
- TOELESS JOURNEY by Satish Verma
- Once Was A Singer For God Remembering Nekia
- Степан Щипачев – Шар земной
- Владимир Корнилов – Отходная
- O Tell Me The Truth About Love by W H Auden
- A song of living poem – Amelia Burr poems | Poems and Poetry
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
- The Ever-Patient Woman poem – Andree Chedid poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sun Light poem – Ammar Hussain poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sacred Epiphany poem – Ammar Nadeem poems | Poems and Poetry
- Prize poem – Amanda James DIll poems | Poems and Poetry
- Poems from Makiwane poem – Amitabh Mitra poems | Poems and Poetry
- Landscapes poem – Andree Chedid poems | Poems and Poetry
- Peace of Mind poem – Amit Shankar Saha poems | Poems and Poetry
- Oh Mother poem – Amy Haritha Suseel poems | Poems and Poetry
- Ode poem – Amr ibn Kulthum poems | Poems and Poetry
- Nocturno poem – Ana Chig poems | Poems and Poetry
- Nigra Sum poem – Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson poems | Poems and Poetry
- My Mask poem – Amy Haritha Suseel poems | Poems and Poetry
- Mujer Libanesa I poem – Amir Ibn Tawfik poems | Poems and Poetry
- Mother Ocean poem – Amy E. Johnsen poems | Poems and Poetry
- Milagros Retenidos poem – Ana Chig poems | Poems and Poetry
- Midnight poem – Amy Michelle Mosier poems | Poems and Poetry
- Love is Immortal poem – Amy Haritha Suseel poems | Poems and Poetry
- Landscapes poem – Andree Chedid poems | Poems and Poetry
- Ka ‘Ba poem – Amiri Baraka poems | Poems and Poetry
- In an Effort to Translate Solitude poem – Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson poems | Poems and Poetry
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.