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:
- Ольга Берггольц – Ты в пустыню меня послала
- Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness poem – Alexander Pope
- Don’t know the answer by Vinko Kalinic
- Plague Of Dead Sharks
- Юлия Друнина – Я курила недолго, давно, на войне
- Алексей Толстой – С тех пор как я один
- Outsong in the Jungle by Rudyard Kipling
- Afternoon Rain in State Street poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Princess (part 3) poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- In The Train by Sara Teasdale
- At The End Of The Day by Rabindranath Tagore
- Mad Pirate Marmaduke by Ross D Tyler
- The Death Bed by Thomas Hood
- The Other Half by Shaunna Harper
- Conference Swan Beauty
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
- Анатолий Жигулин – Ах, речка, речка Тебердинка
- Анатолий Жигулин – Ах, как весело листья летят
- Аля Кудряшева – Зима застыла среди теней
- Аля Кудряшева – Замылим, потом замолим
- Аля Кудряшева – Я тут недавно встретила свое прошлое
- Аля Кудряшева – Я работаю солнечной батареей
- Аля Кудряшева – Я этой ночью уйду, не спи
- Аля Кудряшева – Ходят катера по Малой Невке
- Аля Кудряшева – Все не то чтобы исчезло
- Аля Кудряшева – Вечер большого дня
- Аля Кудряшева – В этом городе птичий полет шелестит быстролистыми кленами
- Аля Кудряшева – Тяжело деревьям зимой
- Аля Кудряшева – Ты рисуй, девочка, небо пошире
- Аля Кудряшева – Трилогия перед годом (Цепочка ассоциаций)
- Аля Кудряшева – Тишина
- Аля Кудряшева – Театр-весна
- Аля Кудряшева – Такие слишком медовые эти луны
- Аля Кудряшева – Снова current
- Аля Кудряшева – Слишком уж зол ветер
- Аля Кудряшева – Рыбный вальсок
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.