We had Devika reciting from Rudyard Kipling who has been chosen numerous times. The poem about a lost road through the woods is a recollection of something lost:
where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Geetha’s choice was Jiddu Krishnamurti who was brought up to be a seer and mystic and later threw off that persona and freed himself. In this poem he discovers the entire tree from a single leaf:
The entire tree, its great trunk,
Its many branches, and its thousand leaves,
And an immense part of the sky.
I swore there there was no other tree, no other part to the sky –
His schools survive as a legacy of an approach to eduction through nature, the most famous being the Rishi Valley School in Madanapalle, AP. There is a rock, I am told, where students go to meditate. Birdwatching is a particular activity that is encouraged.
The Meditation rock at Rishi Valley School
Joe had recourse to a poem by a poet who lamented the great calamity of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Refaat Alareer who foresaw his own death left a death poem about what should happen afterward. It would cause a little boy to look up and see hope in the sky. The poem If I Should Die has been translated into hundreds of languages, and Joe preferred to recite it in a simple Hindi version with the original English alongside.
Kavita’s choice of Sarojini Naidu as a poet was a poem that describes bangle sellers who brought a ray of golden light:
Who will buy these delicate, bright
Rainbow-tinted circles of light?
Lustrous tokens of radiant lives,
For happy daughters and happy wives.
Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) was known as the ‘Nightingale of India’ because of her lyrical poetry. She was a political activist, and freedom fighter too.
KumKum chose two poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, a favourite of Bobby Paul George who was a co-founder of KRG. They are humanistic poems and both have a sad ring, one extending empathy for a cripple, and the other for a lonely star that seems to call out to him:
I long to still my beating heart.
Beneath the sky’s vast dome I long to pray . . .
Of all the stars there must be far away
A single star which still exists apart.
Pamela chose a poem by a young black poet Amanda Gorman who was called on to celebrate the inauguration of Mr Biden as President in 2021 by reading a prose-poem titled The Hill We Climb. Her costume (a red Prada headband and yellow Prada coat) was more striking than the words, mostly a borrowed feel-good kind of rhetoric:
And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.
Beneath the sky’s vast dome I long to pray . . .
Of all the stars there must be far away
A single star which still exists apart.
Pamela chose a poem by a young black poet Amanda Gorman who was called on to celebrate the inauguration of Mr Biden as President in 2021 by reading a prose-poem titled The Hill We Climb. Her costume (a red Prada headband and yellow Prada coat) was more striking than the words, mostly a borrowed feel-good kind of rhetoric:
And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.
For my money there should be a ‘not’ before the first striving ...
Amanda Gorman Photographed by Annie Leibovitz, Vogue, May 2021
She became a fashion influencer immediately afterwards with a photo-shoot for the Vogue magazine.
The moment when Poetry struck Pablo Neruda and changed his course in life is celebrated in a poem of that name that Saras read:
Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know whereit came from, from winter or a river.
…
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
His romantic ardour is expressed feverishly in the poem Don't Go Far Off.
may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don’t leave me for a second, my dearest,
Shoba selected poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, author of a score of books and the first black woman to serve as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, at the Library of Congress. Sadie and Maud tells the story of two sisters, and though Maud is the one who avoided trouble she is described at the end thus:
Is a thin brown mouse.
She is living all alone
In this old house.
Thomo selected the uncle of the folk singer Pete Seeger, singer and composer of famous songs like Where Have All The Flowers Gone and We Shall Overcome. The uncle, Alan Seeger, was one of the many poets sacrificed on the vast fields of massacre which the fields of Belgium became in WWI – Ypres, Passchendaele, and so on. Like Alareer in modern Gaza, Alan Seeger had a premonition of death when writing his poem I Have a Rendezvous with Death:
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
…
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Th final poem was by the poet and diplomat who wrote those unforgettable lines in To My Coy Mistress, but here he provided for Zakia, The Definition of Love. This poet knows the intimate geometry of love:
As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.
Marvell had the gift of stating in rhyme pithily and inimitably the essence of human experience.
A full account of the Poetry Reading on Feb 21, 2025
Arundhathy
Poet Bio
Dr Temsula Ao is a poet, scholar, novelist and ethnographer from Nagaland. She was born in October 1945 in Jorhat, Assam. She attended Fazl Ali College in Mokokchung, Nagaland’s oldest college, and did her B.A.. She obtained her M.A. in English from Gauhati University, Assam, and then completed her Post-Graduate Diploma in the Teaching of English from the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, and later got her PhD from the North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong, Meghalaya.
Temsula Ao is an Indian poet, short story writer, and ethnographer who writes in English, one of Nagaland's eminent contemporary folkloris, academics, and poets
She retired in 2010 as Professor and Dean of the School of Humanities and Education at NEHU. From 1992-97 she served as Director, North East Zone Cultural Centre, Dimapur on Deputation from NEHU, and was Fulbright Fellow to University of Minnesota, 1985-86. A Padma Shri Awardee, she is widely respected as one of the major literary voices in English to emerge from North East India along with Mitra Phukan and Mamang Dai. She is the recipient of the Governor’s Gold Medal 2009 from the government of Meghalaya.
Her works have been translated into German, French, Assamese, Bengali and Hindi. Temsula Ao has written 5 books of poetry, 2 books of short stories, a book of literary criticism titled Henry James and the Quest for the Ideal Heroine (stemming from her PhD thesis), and a book on her own cultural heritage called The Ao-Naga Oral Tradition. Her poems and articles have appeared in many anthologies. Her first book of short stories called These Hills Called Home: Stories From A War Zone was translated into Kannada. She received the Nagaland Governor’s Award for Distinction in Literature in 2009. In 2013, she was the recipient of the Sahitya Akademy Award for her short story collection Laburnum for my Head (2009).
Dr Temsula interacted with Native Americans as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Minnesota. These interactions gave her an opportunity to learn of their culture and heritage, most notably their oral traditions. Inspired by this, she decided to do the same for her community on returning to India. Thus, Dr Temsula spent twelve years recording the rituals, customs, laws, folktales, myths, belief systems and the like, which was published in 1999 as the ethnographic work The Ao-Naga Oral Tradition. This work has earned the reputation of being the most authentic documentation of the Ao-Naga community.
(Taken from The Indian Sociology Collective, https://theindiansociologycollective.wordpress.com/2020/05/26/dr-temsula-ao-a-biography/)
Poet Bio
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Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was an English journalist, novelist, poet, and short-story writer
Rudyard Kipling a poet, short story writer, journalist and novelist, described
the British colonial empire in positive terms, which made his poetry popular in the British Army. The Jungle Book (1894) has made him known and loved by children throughout the world, especially thanks to Disney's 1967 film adaptation.
Kipling was born in British India which inspired much of his work. His children’s books are classics; one critic noted “a versatile and luminous narrative gift.”
Kipling in the late 19th and 20th centuries was among UK’s most popular writer. In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, as the first English language writer to receive the prize and at 41 its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and several times for a Knighthood but declined both.
Rudyard Kipling was born on the 30th of December 1865 to John Lockwood Kipling and Alice. John was a sculptor and pottery designer; he was Principal & Professor of Architectural at the newly founded Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Arts in Bombay. Kipling wrote of Bombay
Mother of Cities to me
For I was born at her gate
Between the palms and the sea
Where the world-end steamers wait
Kipling’s parents considered themselves Anglo-Indians (a term used in the 19th century for people of British origin living in India). Complex issues of identity and national allegiance would become prominent in his fiction like the Portuguese Ayah (he had one in childhood) or the Hindu Bearer, etc.
In modern day India, where Rudyard Kipling drew much of his material, his reputation remains controversial. It is alleged that he was a prominent supporter of General Dyer of the infamous Jallianwala massacre in Amritsar and that Kipling called Dyer “the man who saved India.” Some say that he never made that remark!
Kipling was also an accomplished artist and produced many of the illustrations of his stories. Many of Kipling’s books have a Swastika printed on the cover, associated with the picture of an elephant carrying a lotus flower reflecting the influence of Indian culture. Once the Swastika had become widely associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, Kipling ordered that it should no longer adorn his books. But the Hindu religious swastika (from the Sanskrit word svastika, which means ‘conducive to well-being’) and the Nazi emblem Hakenkreuz, a hooked cross, with the arms rotated 45 degrees, are completely different in intent.
In 1902, the Kiplings settled in their permanent home, a 17th century house called “Bateman” in East Sussex. The house is a museum now. Following Kipling’s death in 1936, his ashes were interred at Poet’s Corner at the Westminster Abbey.
Geetha
Jiddu Krishnamurti ( 11 May 1895 – 17 February 1986) was an Indian philosopher, speaker, writer, and spiritual figure. Adopted by members of the Theosophical Society as a child, he was raised to fill the advanced role of World Teacher, but in adulthood he rejected this mantle and distanced himself from the related religious movement.
He spent the rest of his life speaking to groups and individuals around the world; many of these talks have been published.
He also wrote many books, among them The First and Last Freedom (1954) and Commentaries on Living (1956–60). His last public talk was in January 1986, a month before his death at his home in Ojai, California. You can listen to him in this talk.
Krishnamurti asserted that “truth is a pathless land” and advised against following any doctrine, discipline, teacher, guru, or authority, including himself. He emphasised choiceless awareness, psychological inquiry, and freedom from religious, spiritual, and cultural conditioning. His supporters — working through non-profit foundations in India, Britain, and the United States — oversee several independent schools based on his views on education, and continue to distribute thousands of his talks, group and individual discussions, and writings in a variety of media formats and languages.
During the 1930s Krishnamurti spoke in Europe, Latin America, India, Australia and the United States. George Bernard Shaw in his later years was acquainted with Krishnamurti and declared Krishnamurti to be the “most beautiful human being” he had ever met. In 1938 he met Aldous Huxley. The two began a close friendship which endured for many years.
In the 1970s, Krishnamurti met several times with the then Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, with whom he had far-ranging, and in some cases, very serious conversations. Pupul Jayakar, the writer, considers his message in meetings with Indira Gandhi as a possible influence in the lifting of certain emergency measures Gandhi had imposed during periods of political turmoil. Here she interviews Jiddu Krishnamurti.
He spent the rest of his life speaking to groups and individuals around the world; many of these talks have been published.
He also wrote many books, among them The First and Last Freedom (1954) and Commentaries on Living (1956–60). His last public talk was in January 1986, a month before his death at his home in Ojai, California. You can listen to him in this talk.
Krishnamurti asserted that “truth is a pathless land” and advised against following any doctrine, discipline, teacher, guru, or authority, including himself. He emphasised choiceless awareness, psychological inquiry, and freedom from religious, spiritual, and cultural conditioning. His supporters — working through non-profit foundations in India, Britain, and the United States — oversee several independent schools based on his views on education, and continue to distribute thousands of his talks, group and individual discussions, and writings in a variety of media formats and languages.
During the 1930s Krishnamurti spoke in Europe, Latin America, India, Australia and the United States. George Bernard Shaw in his later years was acquainted with Krishnamurti and declared Krishnamurti to be the “most beautiful human being” he had ever met. In 1938 he met Aldous Huxley. The two began a close friendship which endured for many years.
In the 1970s, Krishnamurti met several times with the then Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, with whom he had far-ranging, and in some cases, very serious conversations. Pupul Jayakar, the writer, considers his message in meetings with Indira Gandhi as a possible influence in the lifting of certain emergency measures Gandhi had imposed during periods of political turmoil. Here she interviews Jiddu Krishnamurti.
J. Krishnamurti said ‘The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear’
According to J. Krishnamurthi:
“I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organised; nor should any organisation be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path. ... This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies."
(Wikipedia)
These excerpts of a poetical work by J. Krishnamurti, were published first in 1927 under the title The Search, and later in the book From Darkness to Light (1980), along with other poems from this period.
Krishnamurti considered these writings as not being part of his official teachings, for they were written when he was still involved with the Theosophical Society, the organisation that raised him to become the new World Teacher – which he left in 1929.
They are nevertheless a beautiful read, imbued with the wonder of nature, and the search for happiness. In the Publisher’s Note, we read: ‘These poetic writings represent a facet of Krishnamurti that is characterised by the intensity of his feelings and by his passionate appeal to the individual for self-realisation of truth. I hope you enjoy them.’
Joe
Bio of Refaat Alareer
He was an academic , and therefore many students and readers knew him when he was alive. His death that gave an urgent meaning to his work and brought it to global consciousness. The poem was written to his daughter Shymaa in 2011. No doubt he hoped she would live and carry the heritage of her father’s thought. But as fate would have it, she too was killed with her son, an infant, a few months later. So the poem is now addressed to every one of us.
Refaat Alareer, Gaza poet, killed with six of his family in Dec 2023 by Israeli-American bombs
Refaat Alareer was born in 1979 in Shuja’iyya, a neighbourhood in Gaza with a history of fierce resistance against the Israeli occupation. In his childhood he had what I suppose is the common experience of children in Gaza, being struck by stones, by rubber bullets for throwing stones at occupying forces. He saw many of his relatives wounded or killed by the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces), and listened to his grandmother tell him of the grand dispossession they underwent when Israel was created, The Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
The Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer born in 1979 was killed on December6, 2023 in an Israeli airstrike. A posthumous collection of his work, If I Must Die, tells the stories of Gaza in a plea for change. It contains essays and stories, which he knew from the time of his youth in Gaza, no doubt having a premonition of his coming death.
He was an academic , and therefore many students and readers knew him when he was alive. His death that gave an urgent meaning to his work and brought it to global consciousness. The poem was written to his daughter Shymaa in 2011. No doubt he hoped she would live and carry the heritage of her father’s thought. But as fate would have it, she too was killed with her son, an infant, a few months later. So the poem is now addressed to every one of us.
Refaat Alareer, Gaza poet, killed with six of his family in Dec 2023 by Israeli-American bombs
Refaat Alareer was born in 1979 in Shuja’iyya, a neighbourhood in Gaza with a history of fierce resistance against the Israeli occupation. In his childhood he had what I suppose is the common experience of children in Gaza, being struck by stones, by rubber bullets for throwing stones at occupying forces. He saw many of his relatives wounded or killed by the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces), and listened to his grandmother tell him of the grand dispossession they underwent when Israel was created, The Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
He was frequently a marcher in peaceful demonstrations when Palestinians marched to the border fence which symbolised for him the perpetual siege of Gaza, called an open-air prison, where Gazans can neither exit nor enter without Israeli permission.with Israel. Refaat Alareer said on day 3 of Israel’s genocide. “I’m an academic. The toughest thing I have at home is an Expo dry erase marker. But if the Israelis invade ... I'm going to use that marker to throw it at their soldiers, even if that is the last thing that I would be able to do.”
Alareer did his undergraduate work in English at the Islamic University of Gaza and then did an MA at University College London, and a went on to a PhD in English Literature at Universiti Putra Malaysia. Alareer, though most at home in Arabic, chose to publish much of his work in English, to gain a wider audience. Evidence shows he did gain that audience. John Donne, the English poet, was the subject of Alareer’s PhD dissertation and that poet’s well-known line, “Death, be not proud,” haunts his own poem, If I Must Die.
During the 23-day Israeli offensive, Operation Cast Lead, in 2008-2009 he used his time to plan lessons for teaching English in Gaza for the coming semester. Alareer saw his people often mediated, and completely obscured, by western narratives. He was determined to tell the Gazan people’s story unadulterated. He went on to teach English and creative writing workshops, edit and contribute to anthologies, and established the non-profit, We Are Not Numbers, which aimed to pair youth in Gaza with writing mentors.
He said; “The struggle in Palestine for land and rights has to be fought metaphorically and verbally … to shatter the Israeli narratives of a land without a people, of a people without roots, of a people which never existed at all … through this writing, we not only assert our existence, but envision our future.”
He declared: “There is no normal in Gaza. We never have normal days, because even when we go back [after a war] we go back to the siege, the occupation, to dying slowly.”
When will this pass? … How many dead Palestinians are enough?” – he once asked. If I Must Die concludes with several post-7-October dispatches, pages which throb with both Alareer’s and the reader’s dread. “Israel [is] heading toward genocide,” he declared on 13 October, decrying the western world’s overwhelming support for the bombing in Gaza, and what he saw as its refusal to recognise the historical or political context for the events of 7 October. In the early hours of the still-unfolding attack, he told the BBC: “This is exactly like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This is the Gaza ghetto uprising against 100 years of European and Zionist colonialism and occupation,” adding that such an operation was “legitimate and moral.”
“Israel long ago created the concentration camp,” reads an entry from 26 October 2023. “But now this is an extermination camp.”
Kavita
Sarojini Naidu was an Indian poet, freedom fighter, and political leader. She was born in the year 1879 and died in the year 1949. She was known as the Nightingale of India for her lyrical poetry, she played a key role in India’s struggle for independence. A close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, she was actively involved in the Civil Disobedience Movement and the Quit India Movement. She was also the first woman to become the president of the Indian National Congress (1925) and later the first woman governor of independent India (Governor of Uttar Pradesh, 1947). Naidu’s poetry, including collections like The Golden Threshold (1905), reflects themes of patriotism, nature, and Indian culture.
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Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949), also known by the sobriquet as The Nightingale of India, was an Indian independence activist and poet
About the poem The Bangle sellers –
In the poem Bangle sellers Naidu tells about the beauty and significance of bangles in Indian culture. The poem is narrated by bangle sellers who describe their colourful wares, associating different bangles with different stages of a woman’s life.
Kumkum
Bio of Rainer Maria Rilke
He was born on December 4, 1875, in Prague, Austria-Hungary, now Czech Republic. He was the only child of Josef Rilke and Sophie Entz, a woman from a wealthy family. Josef Rilke worked for the Railway.
At the age of ten, Rilke was sent to a Military Academy, where he remained for five years. However, he was unsuited for military life on account of his delicate health and artistic temperament. He later abandoned military training and attended the University of Prague and the University of Munich, where he studied Literature, Art History and Philosophy. Rilke’s literary career began in the 1890s with the publication of his first poetry collections, including Leben und Lieder (Life and Songs) in 1894, and Larenopfer (Offerings) in 1895. However, his poetic voice matured significantly after he met Lou Andreas-Salomé, a writer and former associate of Friedrich Nietzsche. Salomé, 14 years his senior, became Rilke’s mentor and lover, guiding his intellectual and artistic development. Under her influence, he traveled extensively and moved to Berlin, where he wrote his first major prose works, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910), a semi autobiographical novel exploring existential themes.
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Rainer Maria Rilke at age 25 (1875 – 1926)
In 1902 Rilke traveled to Paris, where he became deeply influenced by the sculptor Auguste Rodin, for whom he briefly worked as a secretary. His time with Rodin taught him the concept of Dinggdicht (thing-poetry), the ability to observe objects with intense focus, which transformed his making of poetry into a form of spiritual and artistic meditation.
Between 1912 and 1922, Rilke wrote his most famous and profound work, Duino Elegies, named after Duino Castle in Italy, where he began the cycle of poems. These elegies, considered masterpieces of modernist poetry, explore themes of existence, love, suffering, beauty and the relationship between humans and the divine.
During World War I, Rilke was trapped in Germany and suffered from depression and creative paralysis. After the war, he found refuge in Switzerland, where he continued to write poetry and correspond with notable literary figures such as Stefan Zweig and Marina Tsvetaeva. In 1926, Rilke was diagnosed with leukemia. He died on December 29, 1926 at the age of 51, in Val-Mont, Switzerland. At his request, his tomb stone bears the cryptic epitaph in German, translated as “Rose, oh pure contradiction, delight in being no one’s sleep under so many lids.”
1. Song of the Little Cripple at the Street Corner
This poem captures the perspective of a physically disabled person, likely a beggar, who stands at a street corner, observing life from a position of vulnerability and marginalisation. Rilke, known for his deep empathy and existential themes, and presents the world through the eyes of someone who exists on its periphery, blending sorrow with a quiet sense of endurance.
The speaker is physically limited, confined to a street corner, and likely ignored by most passersby. This physical immobility serves a metaphor for social and existential isolation, being unseen, unliked and forgotten by the larger world.
Despite the apparent stillness, there is an unspoken yearning within the crippled figure, a longing for connection, dignity or simply recognition. The world moves around them, but they remain stuck, both physically and emotionally.
Though powerless in movement, the cripple possess a heightened awareness of his surroundings. Details of life that others overlook in their haste are noticed; this is a meditative insight into human existence.
Rilke does not romanticise suffering but instead allows the reader to step into the perspective of those who are forgotten to reflect on their humanity. The poem does not ask for pity but rather for understanding. He uses the image of a little crippled person to confront the reader with the silent suffering that exists in everyday life. The poem challenges us to acknowledge those who are marginalised and to reflect on how easily we pass by others without truly seeing them. It is a meditation on vulnerability, endurance and the unseen struggle of others.
2. Lament
Rilke’s Lament is a deeply introspective and sorrowful poem that explores themes of grief, isolation, and existential despair. The tone is one of profound sadness, but rather than expressing a personal complaint, it captures the universal weight of human suffering. The poem conveys a deep sense of loss, though it is not always clear what has been lost. It could be a person, a part of self, or even a broader existential loss — such as the loss of meaning or faith. Rilke often explores how language fails to fully capture deep emotions. The poem suggests that suffering is an internal, incommunicable experience, isolating the one who suffers from the rest of the world. Like much of Rilke’s work, Lament reflects on how human beings are fundamentally alone in their struggles. Even when surrounded by others, there is a deep chasm between one’s inner world and the external reality. Rather than merely wallowing in sorrow, the poem subtly raises question: what do we do with our pain? Is there a way to transform it into something meaningful, or are we simply doomed to carry it? Lament is a meditation on suffering that speaks to the universal human experience of loss and grief. Rilke does not provide comfort or easy resolutions but instead invites the reader to bear with their sorrow, to acknowledge it fully. In doing so, he elevates lamentation to an almost sacred act – one that allows us to embrace our deepest emotions and perhaps, in time, find a way forward.
Both poems deal with suffering and marginalisation, but Song of the Little Cripple at the Street Corner focusses on physical limitation and social neglect, while Lament delves into internal, emotional suffering.
Pamela
The poem that Pamela chose was The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman. She chose this poem because it contains some beautiful thoughts on living in harmony and this poem could apply to India too. Such thoughts coming from one so young are heartening!
Amanda Gorman made history when she became the youngest inaugural poet during President Joe Biden's swearing-in ceremony in Washington in 2021. The 22-year-old Los Angeles resident, youth poet laureate of Los Angeles, was the first national youth poet laureate. She was a Harvard graduate, invited to speak at the event by the First Lady Jill Biden, who had previously seen the poet do a reading at the Library of Congress.
Amanda Gorman, age 22, reciting her poem at the Inauguration of Mr Joseph Biden as President on Jan 20, 2021 (headgear and jacket by Prada)
Gorman told The New York Times she wasn't given any direction about what to write, but that she would be contributing to the event's theme of “America United.” She was about halfway finished writing the piece when, on Jan 6th, pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol building.
Gorman ended up staying up late following the unprecedented attack and finished her piece, The Hill We Climb that night. The poet, whose work examines themes of race and racial justice in America, felt she couldn't “gloss over” the events of the attack, nor of the previous few years, in her work.
“We have to confront these realities if we're going to move forward, so that's also an important touchstone of the poem,” she told the Times.“There is space for grief and horror and hope and unity, and also hope that there is a breath for joy in the poem, because I do think we have a lot to celebrate at this inauguration.”
Gorman drew inspiration from the speeches of American leaders during other historic times of division, including Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (Taken from cnbc.com)
Some of the lines that touched Pamela’s heart were:
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what
“just” is isn’t always justice
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.
“just” is isn’t always justice
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently
defeated.
So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we
assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
The poem was written to call for “unity and collaboration and togetherness” among the American people and emphasise the opportunity that the future holds. The Hill We Climb was widely praised for it's message, phrasing and delivery.
Pamela found this poem thought-provoking and moving.
defeated.
So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we
assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
The poem was written to call for “unity and collaboration and togetherness” among the American people and emphasise the opportunity that the future holds. The Hill We Climb was widely praised for it's message, phrasing and delivery.
Pamela found this poem thought-provoking and moving.
Saras
Poet Bio – Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda is a well-known Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 and was regarded by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian novelist, as the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.
Pablo Neruda’s birth name was Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalta. He was born on July 12, 1904 in Parral, Chile. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father, a railway employee. Neftali took his pen name after the famous Czech poet, Jan Neruda.
Pablo Neruda started writing poetry when he was still a teenager. He wrote his first poems in the winter of 1914. He wrote surrealist poems, overtly political manifestos, historical epics, a prose autobiography as well as erotically-charged love poems which were included in his 1924 collection titled Veinte Poemas De Amor Y Una Cancion Desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair). Joe mentioned a decade back at a KRG reading that though Neruda had been recited several times, readers had skirted around this collection and therefore he decided to make a more erotic translation of two of the twenty poems. to show why they remain so popular a century later. In that Feb 11, 2015 KRG reading linked above, you can compare W.S. Merwin's and Joe’s translations of Poem 1.
Neruda completed this compilation of romantic poems when he was only 19 years old. The poems have an explicit sensual undertone, making them controversial since the time he wrote them when he was just a teenager. These poems were his best works and have sold more than two million copies. The English translation of this erotic poem collection was provided by W.S. Merwin who is also a poet.
Pablo Neruda spent a large part of his life as a politician and served in many diplomatic positions over his lifetime, including in India.
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Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973) – Chilean poet and diplomat
He served for one term as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. He was nearly arrested in 1948 when then Chilean president Gonzalez Videla banned communism in Chile. He escaped jail time after his friends hid him for several months in the basement of a house in Valparaiso, Chile. He finally escaped into Argentina through a mountain pass. He continued his political career as a close advisor to President Salvador Allende who was a socialist.
Neruda died of cancer on September 23, 1973.
Shoba
In the poem Sadie and Maud, the poet starts with Maud who went to college but the rest of the poem is about Sadie. Maud is mentioned only in the last stanza where she is described as a thin brown mouse who's living all alone in the old house of her parents. So we assume that she did not marry, she had a job which afforded her a living but she seems to be rather miserable, living all alone in the old house. But Sadie on the other hand is one of the ‘livingest chits in all the land’ and she scraped life with a fine tooth comb. She seems to have lived life to the full playing by her own rules. She had two babies under her maiden name which brought a lot of shame to the family. But she leaves behind a legacy, her two offspring – girls who also struck out from home and went out to experience life as their mother did. The fine tooth comb stands for living life fully with a lot of courage. So, see you next time.
In The Bean Eaters, the poet focuses on an old couple. They are described as this old yellow pair. Poverty and old age are what they are grappling with. Their poverty is seen in the plain chipware, creaking wood and the beans that they are eating for dinner. This couple have a back room which they have rented. It is almost stuffed with things that they have accumulated over the years. In their old age, their favourite pastime is remembering the good times as well as the bad, the ‘twinklings and twinges’ as they are described. They seem reconciled to their modest life, almost content.
Poet Bio
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born on 7th June 1917 in Kansas United States and she died on 3rd December 2000 at the age of 83 years at Southside Chicago, Illinois, U.S. Her spouse was Henry Blatley. She was educated at Kennedy King College. Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet, author and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebration and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950 for Annie Allen, making her the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize. Throughout her prolific writing career, Brooks received many more honours. A lifelong resident of Chicago, she was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968, a position she held until her death 32 years later. She was also named the U.S. Poet Laureate for the term 1985-86. In 1976, she became the first African American woman inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) at her typewriter
When Brooks was six weeks old, her family moved to Chicago during the Great Migration from south to north and from then on Chicago remained her home. She would closely identify with Chicago for the rest of her life. In a 1994 interview, she remarked, ”Living in the city, I wrote differently than I would have if I had been raised in Kansas. I am an organic Chicagoan. Living there has given me a multiplicity of characters to aspire for. I hope to live there the rest of my days. That is my headquarters.”After her early educational experiences, Brooks did not pursue a four-year college degree because she knew she wanted to be a writer and considered a degree unnecessary. ‘I am not a scholar,‘ she later said. ‘I am just a writer who loves to write and will always write.’
Thomo
Thomo read the poem I Have a Rendezvous with Death by Alan Seeger. Thomo discovered this poem when he was searching for protest poems. He thought of Where have all the flowers gone and thought maybe he’d sing that but as he was reading about Pete Seeger, he came across Pete’s uncle, Alan Seeger and read this poem, his most famous poem, I Have a Rendezvous with Death.
Where have all the flowers gone could be shelved for another day.
Alan Seeger was born on 22nd June 1888 and was an American war poet. He served in the French Foreign Legion and fought and died in World War I during the Battle of the Somme in which more than 3 million people fought and more than 1 million were either killed or wounded, making it arguably the most deadly battle in all of human history.
Alan Seeger, was the uncle of the future folk musician, Pete Seeger. He is lauded for this poem, which is believed to have been written during the Battle of the Somme, which started sometime in June and ended on 18th November, 1916. It was written in the winter months, so it must have been in November itself. The poem was published posthumously.
It was apparently popular, a great favourite of President John Kennedy. There’s a statue representing Alan Seeger on the monument in the Place des États-Unis in Paris, which honours those American citizens who volunteered to fight for the Third French Republic and lost their lives during the war, while their country, the USA, was still neutral.
Alan Seeger is sometimes called the American Rupert Brooke, for they were both around the same age and both died in World War I. Thomo read the poem. The title is a refrain repeated for emphasis in the poem. He imagines of Death –
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath
It ends on this note:
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Such a beautiful poem, said KumKum. It features a soldier who's certain that death is near.
Although it would be preferable to avoid this fate, the poem makes it clear that this is simply not an option. The speaker's soldierly sense of duty records an acceptance of mortality, knowing that he will soon meet death. The poet imagines that this will happen on the frontline of a battlefield during springtime.
The young soldier admits that he would rather nestle down into the soft and inviting covers of a cozy bed. How nice it would be to sleep happily next to a lover with their hearts beating and breathing, mingling, and waking up together in a gentle state of happiness!
The Battle of the Somme was not just one solitary battle. It was fought in the same area, but three million over a period of several months fought and a third of them became casualties
Joe said there's a joke, because the commander of the British forces was a Scotsman; Gen. Haig was his name, “Haig was the greatest Scots general in history – he killed the most Englishmen.”
Thomo said some have compared this battle to the The Charge of the Light Brigade, in the Crimean War. Both wars were led by idiots. The Crimean War happened at a time when young gentlemen could buy their commission, and they were very happy to strut around London in military uniforms. They put two nincompoops, Major General James Brudenell, the 7th Earl of Cardigan, and Major General James Yorke Scarlett to lead the British cavalry during the Charge of the Light Brigade.
The same incompetence was on view in this Battle of the Somme, a senseless battle.
Joe said he read recently another story from the other front, the Eastern, where the Germans were facing the Russians, and it was barely a month after Einstein had published his very difficult general theory of relativity, and there was this artillery officer called Karl Schwarzschild, about 40 years old.
He had volunteered and they had made him a spotting officer, calculating trajectories for shells. He wrote a letter to Einstein, and it arrived to Einstein's office in Germany; it was mud-smattered with streaks of blood.
When Einstein opened and read it, he couldn't believe the contents; it was barely a month after the General Theory of Relativity containing very difficult equations – second-order partial differential equations, non-linear moreover, and here was this artillery officer, one month after Einstein had published his equations, he was there at the battlefront and he was sending him what turned out to be the first exact solution to the Einstein field equations, describing the gravitational field outside a spherical mass, assuming its electric charge and angular momentum are zero.
Schwarzschild sent a thick sheaf of papers containing the derived solution from the Eastern front. Einstein was absolutely amazed, and he wrote back,
Berlin, 9 January 1916
“Highly esteemed colleague,
I examined your paper with great interest. I would not have expected that the exact solution to the problem could be formulated so simply. The mathematical treatment of the subject appeals to me exceedingly. Next Thursday I am going to deliver the paper before the Academy with a few words of explanation.”
Schwarzschild’s exact solution to Einstein’s field equations for a spherical mass
(click to enlarge)
Karl Schwarzschild’s note to Einstein
It's part of the history, including that mud-spattered, blood-streaked letter from the front containing the first exact solution of his equation. Einstein's own solution in his 1915 paper was an approximate solution which he had developed.
These are the kind of amazing things that you can't imagine. People are thinking of poetry, people are writing poetry, people are solving mathematical equations, people are keeping in touch with the most abstract things, and here is this murderous war going on around them.
Alan Seeger is widely regarded as the inspiration for the statue figure at the top of the memorial in Paris honoring those fallen Americans who volunteered for France during World War I
A statue representing Alan Seeger is there on the monument in the Place des États-Unis (Plaas de zita zuni) in Paris, a public space in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, about 500 m south of the Place de l'Étoile and the Arc de Triomphe. The monument honours American citizens who volunteered to fight for the 3rd French Republic and lost their lives during the war, while their country, the USA, was still politically neutral.
Zakia
Zakia chose Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), the author of two of the best-known poems of the 17th century – the wittily persuasive To His Coy Mistress, written in the early 1650s, which begins:
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
The Garden, is another popular one; it describes a garden:
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade
Marvell was a member of Parliament for Hull, a Latin secretary to the council of state, and a diplomat.
Marvell is one of those poets who lie below the surface in bureaucrats. Marvell's lyric poems were a kind of secret second life, and few of his contemporaries suspected him to be a poet. They were first collected and published in 1681, three years after his death at the age of 57.
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Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678)
Secretive by temperament, he was born at Winestead-in-Holderness, a small village in the East Riding, in 1621, and spent his childhood in a rural suburb a mile north of the Hull city walls. His father was a vicar, whose vigorous, learned sermons suggest some literary genes in the family. He was educated at Hull grammar school and Trinity College, Cambridge. By the age of 20, he was an orphan – his father was drowned .
In 1649, he published a poem addressed to the imprisoned royalist poet Richard Lovelace. Then suddenly he was a committed Cromwellian and Republican, and in the early summer of 1651 produced the stirring Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland, praising the future Lord Protector as a man of action and principle. Marvell could work both sides of the aisle.
Marvell's star continued to rise when he was employed as the tutor and companion of Cromwell's prospective son-in-law, William Dutton. But he was prepared to defend his friend John Milton, who was in prison under threat of execution. Milton was a committed supporter of a republican form of government. In 1649, Milton wrote The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates expressing his support for Republicanism. The bonds of poetry exceed those of of politics, one supposes.
Shortly after Marvell’s death, his housekeeper, Mary Palmer, who is said to have been the widow of a tennis court keeper, announced that she and Marvell had married secretly some 11 years previously. She gives a date and a place – Holy Trinity Minories, one of two London churches that, by some ancient quirk, were permitted to marry couples without banns being published. No record survives to confirm her claim. It has been suggested that Marvell was homosexual and marriage was a subterfuge.
Marvell died at his London lodgings on 16 August 1678, of a stroke after a bout of fever.
Poem Analysis of The Definition of Love by Andrew Marvell:
The poet suggests that the greatest love is an impossible one, where the objects of mutual affection are sundered like parallel lines in geometry, fated never to meet.. They cannot be united, but by going on loving each other in spite of unbridgeable distance and hopelessness, they seem to achieve a love that is the mathematical analogue of forever longing for perfect union.
The Poems
Arundhaty
Dream
by Temsula Ao
I dreamed a strange dream last night
And met some people not so bright
First of all there was Shakespeare
Deep in conversation with a “character”
Wearing a collar and a bow
Definitely not Saville Row.
I approached with temerity
Aghast at my own audacity
To question this celebrity
On his play to be or not to be,
“Excuse me sir,I began
“What did you exactly mean
When you portrayed poor Hamlet
In the way you did?”
He turned to me in a puzzled way
Scratching his bald pate ringed with grey
“Er - what did you say?”
“Hamlet, sir, if I may
Ask you why....”
He took a step or two
Not really meaning so to do
And at last stuttered" Hamlet, what?”
I passed on deeply confused
Musing on the paper I'd produced
Where Hamlets' case I had argued
And Shakespeare's greatness praised.
Thus lost in contemplation I progressed
In the land where reason transgressed
When a glorious procession I witnessed
Of a Queen and her entourage.
It was Cleopatra in all her glory
Surpassing descriptions of History
Holding court from her throne of gold
Every gesture, every look, royal and bold.
Being a stranger in the land
I was brought before the royal stand
“Speak” came the royal command.
“Majesty” I said
“Why did you leave Antony
At Actium?”
“What!” She thundered
How dare you she screamed.
But soon a strangeness appeared
Became a giggle, unroyal, absurd
Managed in passing only a query
“Say, stranger, who was Antony?”
But before I reached this sane world
Lo and behold
There stood a presence
Luminous and bold
I discerned no shape
No size no colour
“Stop” it said
“Ask of me
And I will give you the perfect answer
So I boldly shot
“If you are he
Answer me
Why did you let
Milton write
Paradise Lost?”
And out of the mist it answered
“I know of someone called Satan,
But who is Milton?”
Devika
The Way through the Woods
by Rudyard Kipling
They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods...
But there is no road through the woods.
Geetha
The Search (Section III)
by Jiddu Krishnamurti
As one beholds through a small window
A single green leaf, a small patch of the vast blue sky,
So I began to perceive Thee, in the beginning of all things.
As the leaf faded and withered, the patch covered as with dark cloud,
So didst Thou fade and vanish,
But to be reborn again,
As the single green leaf, as the small patch of the blue sky.
For many lives have I seen the bleak winter and the green spring.
Prisoned in my little room,
I could not behold the entire tree nor the whole sky.
I swore there was no tree nor the vast sky--
That was the Truth.
Through time and destruction
My window grew large.
I beheld,
Now,
A branch with many leaves,
And a greater patch of the blue, with many clouds.
I forgot the single green leaf, the small patch of the vast blue.
I swore there was no tree, nor the immense sky--
That was the Truth.
Weary of this prison,
This small cell,
I raged at my window.
With bleeding fingers
I tore away brick after brick, I beheld,
Now,
The entire tree, its great trunk,
Its many branches, and its thousand leaves,
And an immense part of the sky.
I swore there there was no other tree, no other part to the sky--
That was the Truth.
This prison no longer holds me,
I flew away through the window,
O friend,
I behold every tree and the vast expanse of the limitless sky.
Though I live in every single leaf and in every small patch of the vast blue sky,
Though I live in every prison, looking out through every small casement,
Liberated am I.
Lo ! not a thing shall bind me--
This is the Truth.
Joe
If I must die
by Refaat Alareer
If I must die
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze –
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself –
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale
Hindi Translation
by Bhakti Shringarpur:
अगर मुझे मरना ही है
तो तुम्हे जीना होगा
मेरी कहानी सुनाने के लिये
मेरी चीजें बेचने के लिये
कपडे का एक टुकड़ा
और कुछ डोरियाँ खरीदने के लिये
(कपडा सफ़ेद लेना, डोरियाँ लम्बी )
ताकि जब कोई बच्चा गाज़ा में कहीं
आसमान पर नज़र दिखाए
अपने अब्बा का इंतज़ार कर रहा हो जो लौ में निकल चले –
किसी से विधा लिये बिना
ना अपनी देह से
ना खुद से –
ताकि वह बच्चा ताकि एक पतंग
तुम्हारे हाथ की पतंग
आस्मानों में उड़ती हुई
और सोच सिर्फ एक पल के लिये कोई फरिश्ता आया है
प्यार वापस लाया
अगर मुझे मरना ही है
तो उम्मीद बनने दो
अफसाना बनने दो
Kavita
The Bangle Sellers
by Sarojini Naidu
Bangle sellers are we who bear
Our shining loads to the temple fair...
Who will buy these delicate, bright
Rainbow-tinted circles of light?
Lustrous tokens of radiant lives,
For happy daughters and happy wives.
Some are meet for a maiden's wrist,
Silver and blue as the mountain mist,
Some are flushed like the buds that dream
On the tranquil brow of a woodland stream,
Some are aglow with the bloom that cleaves
To the limpid glory of new born leaves
Some are like fields of sunlit corn,
Meet for a bride on her bridal morn,
Some, like the flame of her marriage fire,
Or, rich with the hue of her heart's desire,
Tinkling, luminous, tender, and clear,
Like her bridal laughter and bridal tear.
Some are purple and gold flecked grey
For she who has journeyed through life midway,
Whose hands have cherished, whose love has blest,
And cradled fair sons on her faithful breast,
And serves her household in fruitful pride,
And worships the gods at her husband's side.
KumKum
Song of the Little Cripple at the Street Corner
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Maybe my soul’s all right.
But my body’s all wrong,
All bent and twisted,
All this that hurts me so.
My soul keeps trying, trying
To straighten my body up.
It hangs on my skeleton, frantic,
Flapping its terrified wings.
Look here, look at my hands,
They look like little wet toads
After a rainstorm’s over,
Hopping, hopping, hopping.
Maybe God didn’t like
The look of my face when He saw it.
Sometimes a big dog
Looks right into it.
(Translated By David Ferry from German)
Pamela
The Hill We Climb
by Amanda Gorman
When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry. A sea we must wade.
We braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.
And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.
And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.
And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried.
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.
It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation, rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption.
We feared at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour.
But within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain.
If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the golden hills of the West.
We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked South.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.
And every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
Saras
Two poems by Pablo Neruda
1. Poetry
And it was at that age … Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.
2. Don't Go Far Off
Don’t go far off, not even for a day, because —
because — I don’t know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.
Don’t leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.
Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don’t leave me for a second, my dearest,
because in that moment you’ll have gone so far
I’ll wander lazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?
Shoba
2 poems by Gwendolyn Brooks
1. The Bean Eaters
By Gwendolyn Brooks
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.
Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.
And remembering ...
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room
that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.
2. Sadie and Maud
Maud went to college.
Sadie stayed at home.
Sadie scraped life
With a fine-tooth comb.
She didn’t leave a tangle in.
Her comb found every strand.
Sadie was one of the livingest chits
In all the land.
Sadie bore two babies
Under her maiden name.
Maud and Ma and Papa
Nearly died of shame.
When Sadie said her last so-long
Her girls struck out from home.
(Sadie had left as heritage
Her fine-tooth comb.)
Maud, who went to college,
Is a thin brown mouse.
She is living all alone
In this old house.
Thomo
I Have a Rendezvous with Death
by Alan Seeger
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows ’twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Zakia
The Definition of Love
by Andrew Marvell
My love is of a birth as rare
As ’tis for object strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.
Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing
Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown,
But vainly flapp’d its tinsel wing.
And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixt,
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.
For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic pow’r depose.
And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have plac’d,
(Though love’s whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embrac’d;
Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear;
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramp’d into a planisphere.
As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.
Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.
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