by Agha Shahid Ali
First, grant me my sense of history:
I did it for posterity,
for kindergarten teachers
and a clear moral:
Little girls shouldn’t wander off
in search of strange flowers,
and they mustn’t speak to strangers.
And then grant me my generous sense of plot:
Couldn’t I have gobbled her up
right there in the jungle?
Why did I ask her where her grandma lived?
As if I, a forest-dweller,
didn’t know of the cottage
under the three oak trees
and the old woman lived there
all alone?
As if I couldn’t have swallowed her years before?
And you may call me the Big Bad Wolf,
now my only reputation.
But I was no child-molester
though you’ll agree she was pretty.
And the huntsman:
Was I sleeping while he snipped
my thick black fur
and filled me with garbage and stones?
I ran with that weight and fell down,
simply so children could laugh
at the noise of the stones
cutting through my belly,
at the garbage spilling out
with a perfect sense of timing,
just when the tale
should have come to an end.
A Walk Through the Yellow Pages
Copyright ©:
1987, SUN-Gemini Press
A few random poems:
- Woman by Tala Bar
- Эмиль Верхарн – Восстание
- On Pedigree. From Epicharmus by William Cowper
- Ode On The Spring by Thomas Gray
- Taking Off by Satish Verma
- a-tempest-in-a-teacup.html
- The Prayer of Miriam Cohen by Rudyard Kipling
- Occasioned By Some Verses of His Grace the Duke of Buckingham poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Halloween by Robert Burns
- Вероника Тушнова – Твои глаза
- Psalm 86 poem – John Milton poems
- To Aziz Song Of Mahomed Akram
- Before by Yehuda Amichai
- The Iliad: Book VI (excerpt) poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Notice by Steve Kowit
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
- All Things Will Die poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Alfred Lord Tennyson; The Coming Of Arthur poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- After-Thought poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- A Farewell poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Villonaud for This Yule poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Villanelle: The Psychological Hour poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Ts’ai Chi’h poem – Ezra Pound poems
- These Fought in Any Case poem – Ezra Pound poems
- The Tree poem – Ezra Pound poems
- The Summons poem – Ezra Pound poems
- The Seeing Eye poem – Ezra Pound poems
- The Seafarer poem – Ezra Pound poems
- The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter poem – Ezra Pound poems
- The Return poem – Ezra Pound poems
- The Plunge poem – Ezra Pound poems
- The Needle poem – Ezra Pound poems
- The Lake Isle poem – Ezra Pound poems
- The Jewel Stairs’ Grievance poem – Ezra Pound poems
- The Garret poem – Ezra Pound poems
- The Garden poem – Ezra Pound 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