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:
- My World Destroyed by Roberto Cocina
- Олег Бундур – Я не плачу
- Олег Бундур – Заповедная жизнь
- Иван Козлов – Умирающая Эрменгарда
- The First Part: Sonnet 4 – Fair is my yoke, though grievous be my pains, by William Drummond
- Lines For Winter by Mark Strand
- Robert Burns: I Hae Been At Crookieden:
- Autumn poem – Ysabelle Moriarty poems | Poetry Monster
- Stacking The Straw poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- Words – “My only friends forever” by Vasishta Sharma Gudi
- Centenarian’s Story, The. by Walt Whitman
- Elegy I. To Charles Deodati (Translated From Milton) by William Cowper
- Summer – The Second Pastoral; or Alexis poem – Alexander Pope
- May Magnificat poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Future Promise Letter by Stevens Cadet
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 Deserted Garden
- The Bayadere
- The Aisne
- Tezcotzinco
- Sonnet Xvi Who Shall Invoke Her
- Sonnet Xv
- Sonnet Xiv
- Sonnet Xiii
- Sonnet Xii
- Sonnet Xi
- Sonnet X
- Sonnet Viii
- Sonnet Vii
- Sonnet Vi
- Sonnet V
- Sonnet Ix
- Sonnet Iv
- Sonnet Iii
- Sonnet Ii
- Sonnet I
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.