A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000)
by Alec Derwent Hope
When, darkly brooding on this Modern Age,
The journalist with his marketable woes
Fills up once more the inevitable page
Of fatuous, flatulent, Sunday-paper prose;
Whenever the green aesthete starts to whoop
With horror at the house not made with hands
And when from vacuum cleaners and tinned soup
Another pure theosophist demands
Rebirth in other, less industrial stars
Where huge towns thrust up in synthetic stone
And films and sleek miraculous motor cars
And celluloid and rubber are unknown;
When from his vegetable Sunday School
Emerges with the neatly maudlin phrase
Still one more Nature poet, to rant or drool
About the “Standardization of the Race”;
I see, stooping among her orchard trees,
The old, sound Earth, gathering her windfalls in,
Broad in the hams and stiffening at the knees,
Pause and I see her grave malicious grin.
For there is no manufacturer competes
With her in the mass production of shapes and things.
Over and over she gathers and repeats
The cast of a face, a million butterfly wings.
She does not tire of the pattern of a rose.
Her oldest tricks still catch us with surprise.
She cannot recall how long ago she chose
The streamlined hulls of fish, the snail’s long eyes,
Love, which still pours into its ancient mould
The lashing seed that grows to a man again,
From whom by the same processes unfold
Unending generations of living men.
She has standardized his ultimate needs and pains.
Lost tribes in a lost language mutter in
His dreams: his science is tethered to their brains,
His guilt merely repeats Original Sin.
And beauty standing motionless before
Her mirror sees behind her, mile on mile,
A long queue in an unknown corridor,
Anonymous faces plastered with her smile.
A few random poems:
- My Miracle Valentine by Tirtha Raj Baral (Sanu Punatare)
- Олег Бундур – Колыбельная для мамы
- Wibble Wobble poem – Alexander E Musset poems | Poetry Monster
- Юлия Жадовская – Ах, бабушкин сад
- Balmoral Castle by William Topaz McGonagall
- Li Po, the moon and me by Raj Arumugam
- Enigma of A Phoenix by Neelam Dadhwal
- The Nights Remember by Sara Teasdale
- Владимир Степанов – Неваляшка (Буква Н)
- A Cradle Song by William Butler Yeats
- My Song by Rabindranath Tagore
- So tired by Tanisha Avarsekar
- Владимир Костров – 1380 год
- Yesterday’s Mishaps by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Шекспир – Я так тебя люблю – Сонет 36
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
- Владимир Маяковский – Смотри, крестьянин (РОСТА №463)
- Владимир Маяковский – Смотри, чтоб праздник перешел и в будни
- Владимир Маяковский – Служака
- Владимир Маяковский – Слушай, шахтер!.. (РОСТА №843)
- Владимир Маяковский – Слушай, наводчик
- Владимир Маяковский – Слово “Товарищ” говоришь ты?! (РОСТА №449)
- Владимир Маяковский – Слегка нахальные стихи товарищам из ЭМКАХИ
- Владимир Маяковский – Славянский вопрос-то решается просто
- Владимир Маяковский – Сказка про купцову нацию, мужика и кооперацию
- Владимир Маяковский – Сказка о Пете, толстом ребенке, и о Симе, который тонкий
- Владимир Маяковский – Сказка о красной шапочке
- Владимир Маяковский – Сказка для шахтера-друга про шахтерки, чуни и каменный уголь
- Владимир Маяковский – Шумики, шумы и шумищи
- Владимир Маяковский – Шляпами панов не забить… (РОСТА №222)
- Владимир Маяковский – Шестой
- Владимир Маяковский – Севастопольский корреспондент “Матен” сообщает… (РОСТА №507)
- Владимир Маяковский – Серые! К вам орем вниз мы… (РОСТА №313)
- Владимир Маяковский – Сердитый дядя
- Владимир Маяковский – Селькор
- Владимир Маяковский – Сейчас беднее нас нет… (РОСТА №742)
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
Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) was an Australian poet and essayist known for his satirical slant. He was also a critic, teacher and academic.