Ars Poetica?

Czeslaw Milosz

Listen

I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

That's why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,
though its an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.
It's hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from,
when so often they're put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.

What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,
who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues,
and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand,
work at changing his destiny for their convenience?

It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today,
and so you may think that I am only joking
or that I've devised just one more means
of praising Art with the help of irony.

There was a time when only wise books were read
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
People therefore preserve silent integrity
thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

Continuing with the general trend of poems about poetry (no, BM, I'm not trying to make this a series, it's just, well, interesting), here's one of my all time favourites.

Oh, and do read the commentary on Minstrels. I have a lot to say about this poem (and about Milosz generally), but I couldn't put it better than the commentary there.

Banalata Sen

Jibanananda Das

Listen

For thousands of years I roamed the paths of this earth,
From waters round Ceylon in dead of night to Malayan seas.
Much have I wandered. I was there in the grey world of Asoka
And Bimbisara, pressed on through darkness to the city of Vidarbha.
I am a weary heart surrounded by life's frothy ocean.
To me she gave a moment's peace -- Banalata Sen from Natore.

Her hair was like an ancient darkling night in Vidisa,
Her face, the craftsmanship of Sravasti. As the helmsman,
His rudder broken, far out upon the sea adrift,
Sees the grass-green land of a cinnamon isle, just so
Through darkness I saw her. Said she, "Where have you been so long?"
And raised her bird's nest-like eyes -- Banalata Sen from Natore.

At day's end, like hush of dew
Comes evening. A hawk wipes the scent of sunlight fom its wings.
When earth's colors fade and some pale design is sketched,
Then glimmering fireflies paint in the story.
All birds come home, all rivers, all of this life's tasks finished.
Only darkness remains, as I sit there face to face with Banalata Sen.

Banalata is apparently a recurring theme throughout Das's works though no one knows whether there really was a Banalata Sen. Which is perfect as the reader is completely left to imagine his own Banalata Sen.

See commentary on Minstrels.

And yes, I plead guilty. It is my voice.

Facing It

Yusef Komunyakaa

Listen (read by the poet)

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

"Facing It" is one of Komunyakaa's most well known poems, printed in "Dien Cai Dau" about his experiences visiting the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., and his emotions that he experienced while he was at the memorial. Imagine what the feelings would be like to see a friend's name etched on this wall? On October 30th, 2002 Yusef gave a phone interview. Yusef says later on, "The sky, a plane in the sky. / A white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes / look through mine. I'm a window."*

Death be not proud (Holy Sonnet X)

John Donne

Listen

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure: then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

See commentary on Minstrels.

Ein Yahav

Yehuda Amichai

Listen (to Chana Bloch read)

A night drive to Ein Yahav in the Arava Desert,
a drive in the rain. Yes, in the rain.
There I met people who grow date palms,
there I saw tamarisk trees and risk trees,
there I saw hope barbed as barbed wire.
And I said to myself: That's true, hope needs to be
like barbed wire to keep out despair,
hope must be a mine field.

Chana Bloch reads her translation of the hebrew poem by Yehuda Amichai. Amichai is considered one of the greatest modern Israeli poets. My bias toward poets who write about the ordinary and mudane makes him one of my favourites.

Acquainted with the Night

Robert Frost

Listen

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain --and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

See the Minstrels commentary here.

For form freaks: As the comments point out, this is a terza rima, but a pretty special one, not only because it's also a 14 line sonnet, but because it also (in a move faintly reminiscent of villanelles?), makes its first line its last. All in all, a stunning poem.

The other famous poem to use the terza rima in English (which Minstrels, amazingly, does not mention, thus giving me the opportunity to add value) is Shelley's Ode to the West Wind.

A note on the text: The Minstrels version, as well as a number of other versions I've seen on the Web, say "O luminary clock against the sky". That makes no sense, and is not how I remember it, so I'm pretty sure it's an error.

Poetry

Nikki Giovanni

Listen

poetry is motion graceful
as a fawn
gentle as a teardrop
strong like the eye
finding peace in a crowded room

we poets tend to think
our words are golden
though emotion speaks too
loudly to be defined
by silence

sometimes after midnight or just before
the dawn
we sit typewriter in hand
pulling loneliness around us
forgetting our lovers or children
who are sleeping
ignoring the weary wariness
of our own logic
to compose a poem
no one understands it
it never says "love me" for poets are
beyond love
it never says "accept me" for poems seek not
acceptance but controversy
it only says "i am" and therefore
i concede that you are too

a poem is pure energy
horizontally contained
between the mind
of the poet and the ear of the reader
if it does not sing discard the ear
for poetry is song
if it does not delight discard
the heart for poetry is joy
if it does not inform then close
off the brain for it is dead
if it cannot heed the insistent message
that life is precious

which is all we poets
wrapped in our loneliness
are trying to say

Eugenio Montale, speaking on the topic 'Isolation and Communication' in 1952 said: "the most important voices will the voices of those artists who through their isolated voices give expression to an echo of the fateful isolation of each of us. In this sense, only the isolated speak, only the isolated communicate".

There are few better examplars of that paradox, I think, than Giovanni, whose best poems do not so much reach out to you as draw you in; who connects best to her readers when she speaks, as she does here, from the calm depths of her loneliness, from a strength of introspection that makes her work deeply personal, deeply heartfelt. There are many Giovanni poems that are just, well, clever; but there are a few where her natural knack for rhythm combines with an exactness of intimacy that is quite stunning.

What I love about this poem is its unflinching absoluteness. Poems are never wrong, Giovanni tells us, it is the heart or brain or ear that must be at fault if they do not work. But even as she utters these didactic pronouncements Giovanni has the grace to laugh at herself, and acknowledge the lonely, often delusional nature of her craft. This is a fine poem because it argues that poetry is both helpless and necessary - not so much an art form to be polished and made robust, but a mode of being alive.

Minstrels doesn't have this poem. But it does have other Giovanni poems (as well as relevant links): here, here and here. Go read.

Reconciliation

Walt Whitman

Listen

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white faced and still in the coffin - I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

For a change, Minstrels doesn't actually have this one. But here's some commentary on it that a dear friend sent me:

"It's almost impossible to have a favourite Whitman poem, but if I had to pick one this would be it. If there's one complaint I have against Whitman it's that he tends to ramble sometimes - so that reading his poems I often find myself wishing he'd edited them down a little.

Not so here - every line, every word is perfection. A poem that rises and falls in quiet, thoughtful cadences, the measured voice of a tired old man who discovers, at the end of all his struggle, a frail truth. Just the sound of this poem read aloud would be reason enough to love it; just the way in which that exquisite, aching first line tears all the world open only to have the slow diminuendo of the last line put it back together again, reconciling the poem with the silence.

But Whitman does more - in just six lines he manages to pack in such a wealth of emotion: consolation, defeat, regret, forgiveness, awe. And leaves us, using nothing more than a single phrase ("a man divine as myself"), with the tragic and dreamlike image of a man leaning over his own coffin, reconciled to his own death.

This is a poem that combines the richness of a haiku with the tone of a soliloquy, and still manages to achieve, overall, a sense of peace."

If I could tell you

W. H. Auden

Listen

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away?
Will time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

As usual, see commentary on Minstrels.

* The title of this poem on Minstrels is simply Villanelle - which, of course, is the verse form. My edition of Auden's Collected Shorter Poems (Faber and Faber) titles it 'If I could tell you', so I decided to go with that.

Saddest Poem - II

Pablo Neruda (Tr. By W.S. Merwin)

Rivera has recorded W.S. Merwin's translation of the Saddest Poem. His original recording can be found here.

Listen

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Breaking Up

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

In what what would be our first listener request, we have a Yevtushenko poem, recorded by Rivera.

Listen

I fell out of love: that's our story's dull ending,
as flat as life is, as dull as the grave.
Excuse me -- I'll break off the string of this love song
and smash the guitar. We have nothing to save.

The puppy is puzzled. Our furry small monster
can't decide why we complicate simple things so --
he whines at your door and I let him enter,
when he scratches at my door, you always go.

Dog, sentimental dog, you'll surely go crazy,
running from one to the other like this --
too young to conceive of an ancient idea:
it's ended, done with, over, kaput. Finis.

Get sentimental and we end up by playing
the old melodrama, "Salvation of Love."
"Forgiveness," we whisper, and hope for an echo;
but nothing returns from the silence above.

Better save love at the very beginning,
avoiding all passionate "nevers," "forevers;"
we ought to have heard what the train wheels were shouting,
"Do not make promises!" Promises are levers.

We should have made note of the broken branches,
we should have looked up at the smokey sky,
warning the witless pretensions of lovers --
the greater the hope is, the greater the lie.

True kindness in love means staying quite sober,
weighing each link of the chain you must bear.
Don't promise her heaven -- suggest half an acre;
not "unto death," but at least to next year.

And don't keep declaring, "I love you, I love you."
That little phrase leads a durable life --
when remembered again in some loveless hereafter,
it can sting like a hornet or stab like a knife.

So -- our little dog in all his confusion
turns and returns from door to door.
I won't say "forgive me" because I have left you;
I ask pardon for one thing: I loved you before.

I know there are a whole bunch of people who would not appreciate this poem today and others who would, and then there is the third kind, who will wonder, what all the fuss is about? :) This is for everyone of you.

Check the minstrels for commentary on the poem and wiki for Yevtushenko's bio.

Last Sonnet / Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art

John Keats

Listen

Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

First love is wonderful, isn't it?

John Keats was the first poet I ever fell in love with - something breathtaking and unshamable about his engagement of beauty, the equal purity of his verses and his heart, spoke to my adolescent self in a way that can only be described as enchantment [1]. And while I am no longer as starry-eyed about his poetry as I was at 15, he remains, for me, one of the most exquisite and ravishing of all poets; the only writer, whose language, for sheer aestheticism, is fully the rival of Shakespeare's.

It's only fitting then, that if we must celebrate Valentine's Day, we shall do it, Not chariot'd by Hallmark and its cards, but on "the viewless wings of Poesy".

For more commentary, see Minstrels.

[1] Keats himself describes the feeling of discovering poetry for the first time: "I am brimful of the friendliness / that in a little cottage I have found / Of fair-hair'd Milton's eloquent distress / And all his love for gentle Lycid drown'd / Of lovely Laura in her light green dress / And faithful Petrarch gloriously crown'd"

Why did I laugh tonight?

John Keats

Listen (the voice is mine)

Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell
No God, no demon of severe response
Deigns to reply from heaven or from hell
Then to my human heart I turn at once:
Heart, thou and I are here, sad and alone,
Say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O darkness! darkness! Forever must I moan
To question heaven and hell and heart in vain?
Why did I laugh? I know this being's lease
My fancy to it's utmost blisses spreads
Yet would I on this very midnight cease
And all the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds
Verse, fame and beauty are intense indeed
But death intenser, death is life's high meed.


See commentary on Minstrels.

A Supermarket in California

Allen Ginsberg

"Beatnik-Sputnik. I never can remember those kinds of terms."
- Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami

Just one of those days when you want to go back to some good beat poetry.

Listen (to Ginsberg read)

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in
an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be
lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

The minstrels have good commentary on this too.

The More Loving One

W.H. Auden

Listen

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

(black mamba reads the poem)

For commentary on the poem, check the minstrels.

Adonais : An Elegy On The Death Of John Keats

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Listen (to the BBC recording)

I weep for Adonais -he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!"

Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania
When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,
Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise
She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,
Rekindled all the fading melodies
With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death.

O, weep for Adonais -he is dead!
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!
Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone, where all things wise and fair
Descend; -oh, dream not that the amorous Deep
Will yet restore him to the vital air;
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.

Most musical of mourners, weep again!
Lament anew, Urania! -He died,
Who was the Sire of an immortal strain,
Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride,
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide
Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite
Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,
Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite
Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light.

Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb;
And happier they their happiness who knew,
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time
In which suns perished; others more sublime,
Struck by the envious wrath of man or god,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
And some yet live, treading the thorny road
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode.

But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished -
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew;
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,
The bloom, whose petals nipped before they blew
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken lily lies -the storm is overpast.

...(click here for more)

For more on the poem, check the Literary Encyclopedia.

Saddest Poem

Pablo Neruda

Listen

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.


(Rivera reads the poem)

Kubla Khan

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Listen (from the BBC)

(or, a Vision in a Dream, a Fragment)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.


Look here for commentary.

Epitaph on a tyrant

W H Auden

(One of my favorites, by one of my favorite poets. Some more commentary here)

Listen

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

(Susmit reads the poem)

Prayer

Rabindranath Tagore

(My first two lines of Bengali, ha ha ha!)

Listen

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow
domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depths of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought
and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T. S. Eliot

Listen (to Sir Antony Hopkins read)

 S`io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair---
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin---
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all;
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all---
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all---
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep...tired...or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon
a platter,
I am no prophet --- and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say, "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor
---
And this, and so much more?
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or to
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous---
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old...I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Til human voices wake us, and we drown.

(audio copyright held by The Poetry Foundation and The National Endowment for the Arts )

Solitary Reaper

William Wordsworth

Introducing Rivera, my friend whose beautiful rendition and guitar playing, feature in this recording. (Scroll to the end of the post, for the alternate version of the same poem).

On why he chose to record this poem, “When I read this poem in my sixth grade, I found it near and dear to me. It reminded me of someone yearning for lost love.”

Listen [1]

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.

[1] Rendered by Rivera.

Listen to a more interesting alternate version recorded by him. I was unsure if all the fancy guitar playing in the later version, distracts the listener from the poetry, so the former version is posted at the top.

Ars Poetica

Archibald MacLeish

Listen

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

Memory by memory the mind -

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

A poem should be equal to:
Not true

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf


For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -

A poem should not mean
But be

(falstaff reads the poem)

Kabhi Kabhi

Sahir Ludhianvi

Listen (to Amitabh Bachchan read)

kabhii kabhii mere dil me.n Khayaal aataa hai...

ke zindagii terii zulfo.n kii narm chaao.n me.n
guzarane paatii to shaadaab ho bhii sakatii thii
ye tiirgii jo merii ziist kaa muqaddar hai
terii nazar kii shuaao.n me.n kho bhii sakatii thii

ajab na thaa ke mai.n begaanaa-e-alam ho kar
tere jamaal kii raanaaiiyo.n me.n kho rahataa
teraa gudaaz badan terii niim-baar aa.Nkhe.n
i.nhii.n hasiin fasaano.n me.n maaho rahataa

pukaaratii.n mujhe jab talKhiyaa.N zamaane kii
tere labo.n se halaawat ke ghuu.NT pii letaa
hayaat chiikhatii phiratii barahanaa-sar, aur mai.n
ghanerii zulfo.n ke saaye me.n chhup ke jii letaa

magar ye ho na sakaa aur ab ye aalam hai
ke tuu nahii.n, teraa Gam, terii justajuu bhii nahii.n
guzar rahii hai kuchh is tarah zi.ndahii jaise
ise kisii ke sahaare kii aarazuu bhii nahii.n

zamaane bhar ke dukho.n ko lagaa chukaa huu.N gale
guzar rahaa huu.N kuchh a.njaanii guzar_gaaho.n se
muhiib saaye merii simt ba.Date aate hai.n
hayaat-o-maut ke pur_haul Khaarazaaro.n se

na koii jaadaa na manzil na roshanii kaa suraaG
bhaTak rahii hai Khaalaao.n me.n zindagii merii
i.nhii.n Khalaao.n me.n rah jaauu.Ngaa kabhii khokar
mai.n jaanataa huu.N merii ham-nafas magar yuu.N hii

kabhii kabhii mere dil me.n Khayaal aataa hai

The poem in devnagri.

Sahir Ludhianvi is one of the most important lyricist in Bollywood, who has penned some of the greatest hits/classics in its history. Interestingly some of his very popular lyrics have a more serious companion version - which are just as admired and appreciated by the Urdu Literary world .

For instance, the recording featured here, is a slightly modified and shortened version of the original in Talkhiiyaan .

Sonnet XXIX

William Shakespeare

Because after all, no collection of poetry can ever be complete without the Bard.
Listen

When in disgrace with Fortune and mens eyes,
I all alone beweepe my out-cast state,
And trouble deafe heaven with my bootlesse cries,
And looke upon my selfe and curse my fate.
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possest,
Desiring this mans art and that mans skope,
With what I most injoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts my selfe almost despising,
Haplye I thinke on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the Larke at breake of daye arising)
From sullen earth sings himns at Heavens gate,
For thy sweet love remembred such welth brings,
That then I skorne to change my state with Kings.


(the voice mauling the poem is mine, btw)