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:
- In Uncertainty To A Lady
- Charity thou art a lie, by Stephen Crane
- The Meeting by Sara Teasdale
- November by Thomas Hood
- Sonnet 01
- Жан де Лафонтен – Два Мула
- In September poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Breast by Russell Edson
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: Is it, then, regret for buried time poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Andrew Jones by William Wordsworth
- Новелла Матвеева – Маяк
- Points And Lines
- Metamorphoses Of The Moon by Sylvia Plath
- On The Death Of Mr Crashaw
- Sheppard’s Quest by Shawn Ervin
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
- Николай Заболоцкий – Змеи
- Николай Заболоцкий – Жена
- Николай Заболоцкий – Зеленый луч
- Николай Заболоцкий – Засуха
- Николай Заболоцкий – Я трогал листы эвкалипта
- Николай Заболоцкий – Я не ищу гармонии в природе
- Николай Заболоцкий – Ходоки
- Николай Заболоцкий – Все, что было в душе
- Николай Заболоцкий – Воздушное путешествие
- Николай Заболоцкий – Вопросы к морю
- Николай Заболоцкий – Весна в лесу
- Николай Заболоцкий – Вечерний бар
- Николай Заболоцкий – Вчера, о смерти размышляя
- Николай Заболоцкий – В тайге
- Николай Заболоцкий – В этой роще березовой
- Николай Заболоцкий – Утренняя песня
- Николай Заболоцкий – Урал
- Николай Заболоцкий – Творцы дорог
- Николай Заболоцкий – Тбилисские ночи
- Николай Заболоцкий – Свадьба
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