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:
- Statement of Being poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Николай Языков – А. М. Языкову (Теперь, когда пророчественный дар)
- The Princess: A Medley: Tears, Idle Tears poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Николай Гербель – Салютовка
- Monsters under the bed by Thomas J Camp
- To Vernon Lee poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Spring
- Sonnet 12: When I do count the clock that tells the time by William Shakespeare
- Give Me Back My Rags #11 by Vasko Popa
- To Sir William Davenant
- Epigram on Miss Davies by Robert Burns
- Prospect by Sylvia Plath
- Степан Щипачев – Свет звезды
- Юлия Друнина – Веет чем-то родным и древним
- Poem Reaching For Something by Quincy Troupe
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
- Юлия Друнина – Я ушла из детства в грязную теплушку
- Юлия Друнина – Я, признаться, сберечь не сумела шинели
- Юлия Друнина – Я порою себя ощущаю связной
- Юлия Друнина – Я не привыкла
- Юлия Друнина – Я курила недолго, давно, на войне
- Юлия Друнина – Я горожанка
- Юлия Друнина – Хорошо молодое лицо
- Юлия Друнина – Все грущу о шинели
- Юлия Друнина – Ветер с фронта
- Юлия Друнина – Верность
- Юлия Друнина – Веет чем-то родным и древним
- Юлия Друнина – В сорок пятом
- Юлия Друнина – В школе
- Юлия Друнина – В семнадцать
- Юлия Друнина – В манеже
- Юлия Друнина – В голом парке коченеют клёны
- Юлия Друнина – Убивали молодость мою
- Юлия Друнина – У моря
- Юлия Друнина – Ты рядом
- Юлия Друнина – Ты должна
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