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:
- Rhymes for Gloriana by Vachel Lindsay
- O my faithful by Priyanka Tungana
- Robert Burns: The Bonie Moor-Hen:
- Dedication To Malcolm Nicolson
- Despondency: An Ode by Robert Burns
- Николай Некрасов – Взирает он на жизнь сурово, строго
- Владимир Маяковский – Для Донбасса формируется поезд с подарками (РОСТА №938)
- Степан Щипачев – Любовью дорожить умейте
- Valediction Forbidding Mourning
- Most Memorable Mother’s Day Gift Ideas
- The Lesson by Maya Angelou
- Robert Burns: On Elphinstone’s Translation Of Martial’s Epigrams:
- Олег Григорьев – Секрет
- Hawk Roosting by Ted Hughes
- There Can Never Be Another You by Miraj Patel
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
- Яков Полонский – Одному из усталых
- Яков Полонский – Ночная дума
- Яков Полонский – Ночь в Крыму
- Яков Полонский – Ночь на восточном берегу Черного моря
- Яков Полонский – Нищий
- Яков Полонский – Неотвязная
- Яков Полонский – Не жди
- Яков Полонский – Наплывает туча с моря
- Яков Полонский – На Женевском озере
- Яков Полонский – На закате
- Яков Полонский – На пути
- Яков Полонский – На искусе
- Яков Полонский – Н. А. Грибоедова
- Юлий Даниэль – Друзьям
- Юлий Даниэль – Дом
- Юлий Даниэль – Часовой
- Юлий Даниэль – Ах, недостреляли, недобили
- Юлий Даниэль – А в это время
- Юлиан Анисимов – Весенний дождь
- Юлиан Анисимов – Стихи мои, нежные гости
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