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:
- Владимир Маяковский – Буржуазия и пролетариат стали врагами друг против друга… (Главполитпросвет №19)
- Dumb poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- For A Gentleman, Who, Kissinge His Friend At His Departure Left A Signe Of Blood On Her by William Strode
- Ольга Берггольц – Как на озёрном хуторе
- Ballade Of Aucassin poem – Andrew Lang poems
- The Stinging Nettle poem – A. E. Housman
- Владимир Маяковский – Юг завоевала победа… (РОСТА №568)
- Women’s Song Of The Corn poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Lover Mourns For The Loss Of Love by William Butler Yeats
- OFF-LIMITS by Satish Verma
- Canzone by W H Auden
- Intorduction to the Songs of Experience by William Blake
- Children of My Own by Marie Starr
- My Butterfly by Robert Frost
- absent-mindedness; or I Dream of Spices by Raj Arumugam
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 Palace
- Storm
- Poor Fisherman
- Invitation
- A Banquet Song
- Written In A Volume Of The Comtesse De Noailles
- With A Copy Of Shakespeares Sonnets On Leaving College
- Vivien
- Virginibus Puerisque
- Translations Dante Inferno Canto Xxvi
- To England At The Outbreak Of The Balkan War
- Tithonus
- The Wanderer
- The Torture Of Cuauhtemoc
- The Sultans Palace
- The Rendezvous
- The Old Lowe House Staten Island
- The Nympholept
- The Need To Love
- The Hosts
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.