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:
- The Childless Father by William Wordsworth
- Ho, everyone that thirsteth poem – A. E. Housman
- Яков Полонский – Последний вздох
- Джон Донн – Когда я с ней, с моим бесценным кладом
- Владимир Британишский – Калмыцкое побережье Каспия
- Валерий Брюсов – Гребцы триремы
- Николай Заболоцкий – Сон
- Meäry’s Smile by William Barnes
- Олег Бундур – Почему собаки дерутся
- VERY DISTURBING by Satish Verma
- A Ballad Of The Trees And The Master by Sidney Lanier
- Get together by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa
- On Passing The New Menin Gate by Siegfried Sassoon
- Владимир Степанов – Ослик
- On The Conduct Of The World Seeking Beauty Against Government poem – Allen Ginsberg
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
- In the Mile End Road poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- In the Black Forest poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- In September poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- In a Minor Key poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Impotens poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Felo de Se poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Contradictions poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Christopher Found poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Captivity poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Cambridge in the Long poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Borderland poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Between the Showers poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Ballade of a Special Edition poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- At Dawn poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- At a Dinner Party poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Wall Flower poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Reminiscence poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Prayer poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- A March Day in London poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- A London Plane-Tree poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
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