A poem by Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929 – 2012)
Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750-1848),
astronomer, sister of William; and others.
A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them
a woman ‘in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles’
in her 98 years to discover
8 comets
She whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses
Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled
in those spaces of the mind
An eye,
‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’
from the mad webs of Uranusborg
encountering the NOVA
every impulse of light exploding
from the core
as life flies out of us
Tycho whispering at last
‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’
What we see, we see
and seeing is changing
the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive
Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body
The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus
I am bombarded yet I stand
I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.
A few random poems:
- Quest for Thee by Vanessa Perkins
- Олег Бундур – Февраль
- Robert Burns: To Daunton Me:
- Robert Burns: Thou Fair Eliza:
- Sonnet LII by William Shakespeare
- Sappho Redivivus: A Fragment by Robert Burns
- Robert Burns: The Fall Of The Leaf:
- Twilight by Shaunna Harper
- Philomela by Sir Philip Sidney
- All Things Will Die poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Two Or Three poem – John Keats poems
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Я. П. Полонскому
- Robert Burns: O Lay Thy Loof In Mine, Lass:
- I’ll go and be a Sodger by Robert Burns
- Владимир Бенедиктов – К точкам
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
- Ballade Of Roulette poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Queen Anne poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Old Plays poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Worldly Wealth poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of True Wisdom poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Voyage To Cythera poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Tweed poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Summer Term poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Southern Cross poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Royal Game Of Golf poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Muse poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Midnight Forest poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Dream poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Dead Cities poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of The Bookworm poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Sleep poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Roulette poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Queen Anne poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of Old Plays poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Ballade Of His Books poem – Andrew Lang poems
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.