by Alan J. Blaustein
Valhalla
by Alan J. Blaustein
High on West Street walking summer day
Sunlight in my face and to my right
Seeing more the Hudson than the street ahead.
I expected factories parking lots and bars,
Nothing else than pleasant afternoon
And then the wonder stopped me seized my sight.
Valhalla? Yes, it was!
Risen in all magnificence from the street
As proudly massive blocks of—stone.
It instantly awed me reduced me to a speck—
For what great purpose could this be?
Home for a breed of freshly risen gods?
I walked beside amazed and looking up
Until I came upon a massive porch
That stretched before great doors of glass and bronze,
Flanked by pillars, granite guards.
A plaque above the doors, all shining bronze,
Proclaimed the name.
Look what the age of heroes has become,
Look how Odin’s dream has re-emerged,
See how the ordinary conquers all,
How wonder can vanish like a wisp of smoke…
I saw for what my hall of gods was built—
Manhattan Community College!
A few random poems:
- On the Subject of Poetry by W. S. Merwin
- Омар Хайям – Мой друг, о завтрашнем заботиться не след
- Владимир Высоцкий – Вова испугался
- Sketch in Verse, inscribed to the Right Hon. C. J. Fox by Robert Burns
- A Journey Through The Moonlight by Russell Edson
- Sonnet 37: As a decrepit father takes delight by William Shakespeare
- Mammary Tunes by Mark R Slaughter
- The Cup of Life by Mike Yuan
- Archaic Torso Of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling
- Love in Twilight by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Sonnet 106: When in the chronicle of wasted time by William Shakespeare
- Ts’ai Chi’h poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Sonnet Xii
- Elegy III. Anno Aet. 17. On The Death Of The Bishop Of Winchester (Translated From Milton) by William Cowper
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
- Hemlock Furrows
- Genius
- Fragment
- Dying
- Dreams Beauty
- Depths
- Battle Stars
- Aspiration
- Answer Me
- Adelina Patti
- The Nuclear Ghost Towns
- The Conditional
- The Ugly Little Bird
- Not A Star
- Mountain Wellhead
- Lightning In The Dark Night Skies
- In The Bus That Is Frantically Rushing From Cairo To Port Said
- Immoral Laboratories
- Hope
- Hope And Riders
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