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:
- Collage by Martine Morillon-Carreau
- Lines Written On Visiting The Chateaux On The Loire poem – Alfred Austin
- George and Sarah Green by William Wordsworth
- The Lamp by Sara Teasdale
- Candles by Sylvia Plath
- 12 Surefire Brainstorming Techniques
- Николай Гумилев – Капитаны
- Everything by Philip Levine
- Snakecharmer by Sylvia Plath
- Little Fugue by Sylvia Plath
- The Rabbi’s Song by Rudyard Kipling
- Hug O’War by Shel Silverstein
- Robert Burns: Fragment Of Song:
- Tumi Sandhyar Meghamala – You Are A Cluster Of Clouds – Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- Dora by Thomas Edward Brown
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
- To an Early Daffodil poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- To a Friend poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Thompson’s Lunch Room – Grand Central Station poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Way poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Trout poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Tree of Scarlet Berries poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Temple poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Taxi poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Shadow poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Road to Avignon poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Red Lacquer Music-Stand poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Promise of the Morning Star poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Precinct. Rochester poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Pleiades poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Pike poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Paper Windmill poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Fruit Garden Path poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Forsaken poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Foreigner poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Fool Errant poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
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.