A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)
When the ice starts to shiver
all across the reflecting basin
or water-lily leaves
dissect a simple surface
the word ‘drowning’ flows through me.
You built a glassy floor
that held me
as I leaned to fish for old
hooks and toothed tin cans,
stems lashing out like ties of
silk dressing-gowns
archangels of lake-light
gripped in mud.
Now you hand me a torn letter.
On my knees, in the ashes, I could never
fit these ripped-up flakes together.
In the taxi I am still piecing
what syllables I can
translating at top speed like a thinking machine
that types out ‘useless’ as ‘monster’
and ‘history’ as ‘lampshade’.
Crossing the bridge I need all my nerve
to trust to the man-made cables.
The blades on that machine
could cut you to ribbons
but its function is humane.
Is this all I can say of these
delicate books, scythe-curved intentions
you and I handle? I’d rather
taste blood, yours or mine, flowing
from a sudden slash, than cut all day
with blunt scissors on dotted lines
like the teacher told.
A few random poems:
- English Poetry. Henry Livingston. To the Memory of Sarah Livingston. Генри Ливингстон.
- Song—Ae fond Kiss by Robert Burns
- Counter-Attack by Siegfried Sassoon
- Nailing by Mike Yuan
- lost_love_is_never_lost.html
- Владимир Маяковский – Профсоюзы – производства рычаг… (Главполитпросвет №10)
- Владимир Степанов – Как живете? Что жуете?
- Федор Тютчев – Как неожиданно и ярко
- Vorticism Is A Choka In Its Modular Home
- A Prayer in Spring by Robert Frost
- Василий Жуковский – Мщение
- Жан де Лафонтен – Фортуна и Дитя
- Владимир Британишский – Мы кончили нашу работу
- Memory by William Butler Yeats
- Sparkles from The Wheel. by Walt Whitman
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
- Far In a Western Brookland poem – Alfred Edward Housman
- Far In a Western Brookland poem – Alfred Edward Housman
- Epitaph On An Army of Mercenaries poem – A. E. Housman
- Could Man Be Drunk Forever poem – A. E. Housman
- Bring, In This Timeless Grave To Throw poem – A. E. Housman
- Bredon Hill poem – A. E. Housman
- As Through the Wild Green Hills of Wyre poem – A. E. Housman
- Along the field as we came poem – A. E. Housman
- The Haymakers’ Song poem – Alfred Austin
- Love’s Blindness poem – Alfred Austin
- At His Grave poem – Alfred Austin
- Agatha poem – Alfred Austin
- Loves Blindness
- The Haymakers Song
- Loves Blindness
- At His Grave
- Agatha
- Why
- Where Are You
- Tell Me
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
Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012) was an American poet, essayist, and feminist.