A poem by Alan Dugan
Who knows whether the sea heals or corrodes?
The wading, wintered pack-beasts of the feet
slough off, in spring, the dead rind of the shoes’
leather detention, the big toe’s yellow horn
shines with a natural polish, and the whole
person seems to profit. The opposite appears
when dead sharks wash up along the beach
for no known reason. What is more built
for winning than the swept-back teeth,
water-finished fins, and pure bad eyes
these old, efficient forms of appetite
are dressed in? Yet it looks as if the sea
digested what it wished of them with viral ease
and threw up what was left to stink and dry.
If this shows how the sea approaches life
in its propensity to feed as animal entire,
then sharks are comforts, feet are terrified,
but they vacation in the mystery and why not?
Who knows whether the sea heals or corrodes?:
what the sun burns up of it, the moon puts back.
A few random poems:
- Николай Заболоцкий – Обед
- The Mouse by Mac McGovern
- Summer poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Still Life by Piera Chen
- Демьян Бедный – Весенний благостный покой
- Translated From A Sonnet Of Ronsard poem – John Keats poems
- Notice by Steve Kowit
- Memoirs Of A Spinach-Picker by Sylvia Plath
- Sleepless by Sara Teasdale
- The Gipsy Trail by Rudyard Kipling
- In the Matter of One Compass by Rudyard Kipling
- Passion by Sera Jacob
- Two Kopjes by Rudyard Kipling
- As I Walk These Broad, Majestic Days. by Walt Whitman
- Sonnet 111: O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide 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
- Hope And Riders
- Do I
- Communal War
- Blank Dreams
- Before
- Again
- A Voice
- A Toast To Nations
- What Of The Night
- Vows
- To Morrow
- The Winged Mariners
- The Watchman
- The Virgin Martyr
- The Vain Question
- The Soldiers Grave
- The Silence In The Church
- The Season
- The Resting Place
- The Old Manor House
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
Alan Dugan (1923 – 2003) an American poet, a contemporary classic of American poetry.