by Ai
We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don’t tell me, I say. I don’t want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life
is a chain of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,
and beginning to rise heavenward
in their confirmation dresses,
like white helium balloons,
the wreathes of flowers on their heads spinning,
and above all that,
that’s where I’m floating,
and that’s what it’s like
only ten times clearer,
ten times more horrible.
Could anyone alive survive it?
A few random poems:
- Иван Крылов – Лиса-строитель (Басня)
- Bathing In The River
- Hitler, a poem about Hitler
- Ольга Берггольц – Воспоминание (И вот в лицо пахнуло земляникой)
- Robert Burns: Epitaph For Mr. William Michie: Schoolmaster of Cleish Parish, Fifeshire.
- To E. Fitzgerald: Tiresias poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- The Gateway
- Алексей Жемчужников – Верста на старой дороге
- Bluebeard by Sylvia Plath
- The Twa Sisters poem – Andrew Lang poems
- October, 1803 by William Wordsworth
- The Blessed by William Butler Yeats
- (Inner Tube) by Michael Ondaatje
- Fareweel To A’Our Scottish Fame by Robert Burns
- Concerning Emperors by Vachel Lindsay
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
- Юрий Верховский – Месяцу, заре, звезде, лазури
- Юрий Верховский – Как раненый олень кидается в поток
- Юрий Верховский – Есть имена, таинственны и стары
- Юрий Верховский – Ах, душечка моя, как нынче мне светло
- Жан де Лафонтен – Язычник и деревянный Идол
- Жан де Лафонтен – Врачи
- Жан де Лафонтен – Воля и Неволя
- Жан де Лафонтен – Волк, Мать и Ребенок
- Жан де Лафонтен – Волк и Лисица на суде перед Обезьяной
- Жан де Лафонтен – Волк и Конь
- Жан де Лафонтен – Война Крыс и Ласок
- Жан де Лафонтен – Виноградник и Олень
- Жан де Лафонтен – Утопленница
- Жан де Лафонтен – Третейский Судья, Брат милосердия и Пустынник
- Жан де Лафонтен – Старый Кот и Мышонок
- Жан де Лафонтен – Ссора Собак с Кошками и Кошек с Мышами
- Жан де Лафонтен – Совет Мышей
- Жан де Лафонтен – Смерть и Несчастный
- Жан де Лафонтен – Скупой, потерявший свое богатство
- Жан де Лафонтен – Шершни и Пчелы
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
