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:
- A Pact poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Day’s End by Tu Fu
- Standardization
- Алексей Плещеев – Ее мне жаль
- Edge by Sylvia Plath
- I Chide Not At The Seasons poem – Alfred Austin
- A Three-Part Song by Rudyard Kipling
- Владимир Британишский – Фет в кирасирском полку
- Иван Дмитриев – Смерть и Умирающий
- Civil War Songs
- Оливер Голдсмит – Оленья туша
- Aftermath by Sylvia Plath
- Владимир Маяковский – В Европе кризис (РОСТА №869)
- Beautiful City poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Sonnet CXXX by William Shakespeare
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
- Coal-Truck by T. Wignesan
- Cinderella by Roald Dahl
- blessing for sound health by matthew scott harris
- Black Lake by Memphis Knight
- Before The Law by Michael Major
- A Conceit by Maya Angelou
- A Rythm Upon Our Trusts by Michael McGovern
- Your Poems on My Patio by Martina Reisz Newberry
- Yesterday’s Mishaps by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Yes Dear by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Words Unspoken by Mark Olynyk
- Woman With Parasol by Martin Willitts Jr.
- Why Write? by Mark Olynyk
- Where Have We All Gone by Mary Etta Metcalf
- What is Poetry? by Mark Olynyk
- Wednesday by Marvin Bell
- To Sea by Martin Zakovski
- To Dorothy by Marvin Bell
- They Thought Her Crazy by Mary Etta Metcalf
- These Green-Going-to-Yellow by Marvin Bell
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.