Of the ten poets read at this session only one was new, Ryan Teitman. All the others from Ben Jonson to W.H. Auden, and the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish had been selected for previous readings. Had Priya been present we would have had one more new poet to add, George Sze.
The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes - illustration
It began with the highly atmospheric and haunting ballad The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. The poem tells about the gallant outlaws of olden times and begins with the line
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
…
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
Ben Jonson invites a friend to supper
Ben Jonson the great rival dramatist to Shakespeare, came up with a feast for his patron that is described in lush terms, more poetic and detailed than any modern Michelin starred restaurant could muster:
An olive, capers, or some better salad
Ushering the mutton; with a short-legged hen,
If we can get her, full of eggs, and then
Lemons, and wine for sauce; to these a cony
Is not to be despaired of, for our money;
And, though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks,
The sky not falling, think we may have larks.
The spirit of conviviality and shared enjoyment at the supper makes for delightful reading.
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St. Cecilia with an Angel by Orazio Gentileschi (father of the renowned woman artist Artemesia Gentileschi). The organ is the symbol of St Cecilia
Auden was a fortuitous choice occasioned by Joe’s desire to remember his sister, Cecilia. Auden wrote the lyrics of a chorale that was composed by his friend Benjamin Britten whose birthday fell on the feast day of St. Cecilia on Nov 22. The refrain has the lines:
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
It ends with an instructive line:
O wear your tribulation like a rose.
Ada Limón, the current poet laureate of America, was read in a simple poem, The Conditional. The poem imagines all the malign things that can happen but reminds us it is enough that tomorrow comes, and we are still alive to enjoy the day:
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.
Robert Frost – man peering into a well
Robert Frost, a perennial favourite among our readers, is here represented by a strange poem in which a man peers constantly at the still water in a well, seeing himself reflected – but one day Something happens. That something is what disturbs this proto-Narcissus from succumbing to his enduring fancy for himself. Readers were reminded of another modern, sitting atop the world with only himself to admire!
Darwish, the poet of Palestine, who made it his calling to defend his land against all comers ready to snatch it from his compatriots, writes:
We have on this earth what makes life worth living:
on this earth, the Lady of Earth,
mother of all beginnings and ends.
She was called Palestine.
Her name later became
Palestine.
My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.
Imtiaz Dharker reminds us that to be in a minority is no disaster, indeed it builds one up to resist all encroachment on one’s freedom and meet others on an equal footing. She writes:
I don’t fit,
like a clumsily-translated poem;
She has become a prescribed author for school children in UK.
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Bob Dylan delivers his Nobel lecture finally – photo by Lester Cohen
Bob Dylan has been a favourite songster-poet of Thomo’s and this time one of his signal recordings, Mr. Tambourine Man, was sung by Thomo, paying homage to one of the greats of the modern world who is still going strong at age 84.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
…
Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’
It is a song about seeking inspiration and escape from the mundane through a mystical, musical figure, often interpreted as a muse. The real Tambourine Man was musician Bruce Langhorne, who played a large Turkish frame drum that looked like a giant tambourine on several covers of Dylan's recordings; Dylan confirmed Bruce was indeed the inspiration.
Bruce Langhorne – Tambourine Man
Devika
Poet Bio
Alfred Noyes, CBE, was an English poet, short-story writer and playwright. Noyes was born in Wolverhampton, England the son of Alfred and Amelia Adams Noyes. When he was four, the family moved to Aberystwyth, Wales, where his father taught Latin and Greek. The Welsh coast and mountains were an inspiration to Noyes.
In 1898, he left Aberystwyth for Exeter College, Oxford, where he distinguished himself at rowing, but failed to get his degree because he was meeting his publisher to arrange publication of his first volume of poems, The Loom of Years (1902), on the crucial day of his finals in 1903. On publication, The Loom of Years was lauded by W. B. Yeats and George Meredith. Noyes' poetry also proved popular with the book-buying public, and for the first two decades of his career his books sold well.
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Alfred Noyes (1880 – 1958), portrait by Alexander Bassano, 1922
Noyes published five volumes of poetry between 1903 – 1913. The Highwayman was first published in 1906. BBC polls of 1995 voted it as the nation’s 15th favourite poem; it was written in two days when Noyes was 24 years old. This poem was also an inspiration for the name of the American Folk Music revival group, The Highwaymen.
The narrative style of the poem takes us on a journey unfolding a vivid scene. The words paint pictures in our minds allowing us to see the wind as a “torrent of darkness” and the moon as a ”ghostly galleon”. What makes the poem significant in literary history is its masterful storytelling and the way it combines elements of romance, adventure and tragedy.
Noyes married Garret Daniels (an army colonel’s daughter) in 1907 and the couple lived off his royalty cheques. The same year they visited America and were entertained by such impressive company as H. W. Longfellow’s daughters and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s sons. Noyes first visited America in February 1913, partly to lecture on world peace and disarmament and partly to satisfy his wife's desire that he should gather fresh experiences in her homeland. His first lecture tour lasted six weeks, extending as far west as Chicago. It proved so successful that he decided to make a second trip to the US in October and to stay six months. On this trip, he visited the principal American universities, including Princeton, where the impression he made on the faculty and undergraduates was so favourable that in February 1914 he was asked to join the staff as a visiting professor, lecturing on modern English literature from February to June. He accepted, and for the next nine years he and his wife divided the year between England and the US.
Noyes enjoyed relationships with the ruling class throughout his life, drinking tea with Theodore Roosevelt in 1919 just hours before the President’s death, and meeting privately with Benito Mussolini in 1939 shortly before the start of the World War II.
Noyes’ wife died in 1926. He remarried a war widow in 1927, whose husband was killed in in World War I. His last poem, Ballard of the Breaking Shell, was written in 1958 one month before his death. He died at the age of 77 and is buried in the Isle of Wright.
The grave of Noyes and his wife
Poem Analysis
Listeners were enthralled by the long poem, which revels in an atmosphere created by the poet of mystery, gallantry, derring-do and ultimate tragedy. They all endorsed the poem for the fantastical emotion.
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
“You can actually picture the whole scene,” said Devika – so well is it described. Joe wondered what inspired the poet, and here is an answer to that question, as well as can be gathered from the literature:
The inspiration behind Alfred Noyes' beloved narrative poem, "The Highwayman," is a fascinating blend of landscape, literary influence, and the poet's own romantic sensibilities.
Noyes wrote the poem in 1906 while staying in a cottage near Bagshot Heath in Surrey. This area, part of a former royal hunting forest, was historically a notorious haunt for real highwaymen. He was particularly inspired by a specific, lonely stretch of road: “The poem was actually written in a cottage on the edge of Bagshot Heath in Surrey, where the old Portsmouth Road, with its history of highwaymen, ran close by... The sound of the wind in the pines there gave me the first line.”
The eerie, atmospheric setting—the windy moors, the ghostly moonlight, and the dark, twisting road—provided the immediate sensory backdrop that sparked the poem’s creation. The opening lines,
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
came directly from this experience.
Noyes was also steeped in the Romantic tradition. By the early 20th century, the historical reality of highwaymen (who were often violent criminals) had been softened into romantic, gallant outlaws in popular culture and literature. Figures like Dick Turpin were celebrated in ballads and penny dreadfuls as dashing rebels. Noyes tapped directly into this mythologized archetype.
The Gothic Tradition makes its appearance in the haunting, supernatural suggestion
And still of a winter's night, they say, the highwayman comes riding…
The heightened emotion is a classic feature of Gothic literature.
Noyes chose to write the poem as a ballad, a traditional form used for centuries to tell dramatic, often tragic, stories of love, death, and rebellion. This form, with its strong rhythm and repetition, makes the story feel both timeless and folkloric.
The poem is a pure invention, a dream, a fantasy – not based on any particular event. But it is a masterpiece of atmosphere, a product of a specific place firing the imagination of a poet who was a master of rhythm and story.
Geetha
Geetha thanked Joe again for the anthology of poems, The Fifth Edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry in PDF which he sent to everyone.
The poem is about the poet Ben Jonson inviting a friend to supper.
Poet Bio Ben Jonson (1572—1637)
Ben Jonson was an English playwright, poet and essayist. He’s famous as a poet and dramatist whose popularity rivalled that of Shakespeare’s during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Jonson was born in London on June 11, 1572. Shortly after his father died, his mother remarried a bricklayer, and that is how he apprenticed to be a bricklayer, his stepfather's profession. He was educated at Westminster School under the scholar William Camden. William Camden had a great influence on Ben Jonson's literary career.
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Ben Jonson (1572 – 1637) Portrait ca. 1617 by by Abraham van Blyenberch
After briefly working as a bricklayer and serving in the military in Flanders, Jonson began working as an actor and playwright for various theatre companies. He married Anne Lewis in 1594 and they had three children, but unfortunately, they all passed away in their childhood.
He became a successful actor and playwright. Jonson's notable works include the plays Every Man in His Humour, Walporn (which means something to do with wolves or foxes), and The Alchemist. He was the first Poet Laureate of England.
His first great play, Every Man in His Humour, was produced in 1598 with William Shakespeare acting in the lead role in a 1616 production. There's a mention of him killing a man in a duel in 1598, but being released by pleading "benefit of clergy," as he could read and write. ‘Pleading benefit of clergy’ refers to a historic legal practice where a person, originally a member of the clergy and later any literate person, could claim exemption from secular punishment. This was done by appealing to be tried in an ecclesiastical (church) court, which was generally more lenient than the secular courts and did not impose the death penalty. Over time, this evolved to allow first-time offenders a lesser sentence by effectively making it a legal fiction
He wrote many popular plays, including Walporn. He continued to write and was a significant figure in the literary world until his death on August 6th, 1637 in London. He's buried at Westminster Abbey.
Jonson's literary art exerted a lasting influence on English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours, a dramatic genre, popularised by him in which the characters are defined by a single, exaggerated personality trait or obsession (their ‘humour’). This form of comedy uses satire and realism to ridicule human folly and affectation, with the moral purpose of encouraging better behaviour.
He wrote lyric and epigrammatic poetry, the brief verses of which are satirical.
Jonson became the first English poet laureate in 1616. He continued to write and was a significant figure in the literary world until his death in London on August 6, 1637.
He is buried at Westminster Abbey.
Poem Analysis – Inviting a Friend to Supper
A little bit about the poem.
The poem explores themes of friendship, hospitality, and moderation. The speaker extends an invitation to a friend for dinner, emphasising the esteem of his company over material wealth.
The menu is modest (!), but carefully considered with a focus on fresh ingredients and a touch of humour. The poem's tone is light and playful, reflecting the spirit of conviviality and shared enjoyment. It departs from Jonson's more satirical and cut-and-thrust style, and instead offers a warm and inviting atmosphere.
Compared to the other works by Johnson, this poem is less overtly intellectual or politically charged. It captures the essence of Elizabethan dining culture, with its emphasis on fellowship and the pleasures of good food and conversation. The poem’s tone is light and playful. Joe observed: ‘What a lavish feast!’ How could a mere poet set out such a feast one wonders? Is it all a great deceit to inveigle a reluctant friend who prefers privacy to company?
There is plenty of food of that era that befuddled Joe like cates, cony, knat, etc. And who the devil are Pooley and Parrot? Joe liked the form though – iambic pentameter set out in heroic couplets. Here are some meanings:
L8 - 'cates' - food
L13- 'cony' - rabbit
L15 - 'clerks' - scholars
L20 - 'knot, rail, and ruff' - these are all game birds
L20 - 'my man' - my servant
L24 - 'profess' - promise
L25 - 'to this' - add to this
L36 - 'Pooley and Parrot' - government spies
Pooley and Parrot are known government informants and spies, who will not spoil their dinner party, Jonson affirms! So they lived in authoritarian times.
According to a Poem of the Week article in The Guardian, Ben Jonson was inviting his patron, William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, to come dine with him. It is number 101 (CI) of his Epigrams and balances the luxury and liberty of happy home-dining with the classical ideal of restraint, says the article. Jonson states:
It is the fair acceptance, sir, creates
The entertainment perfect, not the cates.
Aside: The relationship between Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare is one of the most fascinating in literary history, blending friendship, professional rivalry, and profound mutual influence. Joe weighed in on this aspect, but could not go far enough in the session.
They were leading playwrights for the same London acting companies and audiences. They knew each other personally, drank together at the Mermaid Tavern (according to legend), and were central figures in the same theatrical scene.
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Ben Jonson Eulogy of Shakespeare in the First Folio (1623)
Jonson left us a detailed, nuanced, and deeply personal critique of Shakespeare. In The Eulogy in the First Folio (1623) Jonson wrote a monumental poem, To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author Mr. William Shakespeare, which prefaced the First Folio.
I therefore will begin. Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!
…
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read and praise to give.
…
He was not of an age but for all time!
…
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
It is a masterpiece of balanced praise and critique. However there is a contrast between the characters in their plays. Jonson in comedies like Every Man in His Humour (in which Shakespeare acted) and Volpone, built characters around a single dominant ‘humour’ or personality trait (e.g., greed, jealousy). In Shakespeare by contrast the characters (like Hamlet, Falstaff, or Lady Macbeth) are complex, psychologically deep, and evolve within the play. Shakespeare's work can be seen as a rebuttal to Jonson's theory, demonstrating that human nature is changeable and not so easily categorised.
Shoba
She was born in Lahore in 1954 and came to Glasgow when she was just a year old. She describes herself as a Scottish, Pakistani, Calvinist, Muslim, who has been adopted by India and Wales and various other places .
Here’s an excerpt from her poem, These are the times we live in.
You hand over your passport and he starts reading you ….
Backwards from the last page.
She met a young Indian in Glasgow, Anil Dharker, who was a brilliant engineer, a multifaceted personality who made his mark in construction, journalism, and also headed the NFDC, the National Film Development Corporation of India. They eloped together to Bombay. The city was very kind to her. She was able to develop her voice and write.
Imtiaz Dharker, born 1954
She says, we all carry several identities within us and we must recognise that people evolve and grow. Part of that growing is taking in several cultures.The food we eat, the art we see, the music we listen to… all these become a part of who we are.
Her culture and relatives, she says, are the writers that she has read. Exposure to different cultures and the resultant identities are treasures that one must make the most of. Everyone has a geography that they start with. It is all about growing outward and going beyond the expectation of who you are when you started out.
Her poems have been prescribed in the UK national curriculum for a number of years. In Speech Balloon, which energetically charts the spread of a phrase from one culture to another. Dharker is searching for meaning and identity all the time; critic and fellow poet Arundhati Subramaniam describes this as an “unabashed embrace of unsettlement as settlement” and “an exhilarating sense of life at the interstices.”
Dharker is regarded as one of Britain's exemplary contemporary poets. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2011. In the same year, she received the Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors. In 2016, she received an Honorary Doctorate from SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), which is a public research university in London that specialises in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and languages of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. It is a member institution of the University of London.
With the Poetry Live program, she reads to over 25,000 students a year, travelling across the country with fellow poets Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, John Agard, Gillian Clarke, Daljit Nagra, Grace Nichols, Owen Sheers, Jackie Kay and Maura Dooley.
Dharker is also a documentary filmmaker who has made over a hundred films and audio visuals centring on education, reproductive health, and shelter for women and children.
An accomplished artist, she has had ten solo exhibitions of pen and ink drawings in India, Hong Kong, USA, UK, and France. In 2019, she was offered the position of Poet Laureate following the tenure of Carol Ann Duffy. She declined in order to concentrate on writing.
Imtiaz Dharker, Letter, 2017. Pen and ink on hand made paper
She has a daughter Ayesha Dharker by her first husband Anil Dharker. Later, she married the poet Simon Powell who passed away in 2009.
Poem Analysis
Shoba was at an another engagement but she slipped out and was able to connect with the KRG session from a quiet place in the gym to perform her reading. Talk of commitment! The two poems Shoba read explore the theme of living simultaneously in two cultures and not fitting in anywhere.
From the poem Minority:
And, who knows, these lines
may scratch their way
into your head –
…
I don’t fit,
like a clumsily-translated poem;
like food cooked in milk of coconut
where you expected ghee or cream
She talks of writing as a means of entering the mind of the reader, maybe from a different land, to be understood by himer. Joe thinks it’s always best to be in a minority wherever you are, because then you have to think out for yourself who you are and how you relate, rather than than just falling in with the herd.
Poem The Front door
The poet says that stepping out of the front door is stepping into alien territory where the language and customs shift from home to the world outside:
The food and clothes
and customs change.
The fingers on my hand turn
into forks.
She says that she is high on the challenge of inhabiting two very different spaces. Shoba said they're both talking about how she feels. When Shoba was recently traveling abroad and they were in a restaurant, having Italian food and when she looked around, she was the only brown-skinned person there. Then Shoba felt like the person in the poem. It's a feeling the poet expresses and she writes quite precisely and beautifully.
Geetha said Thomo’s sister Roshni (Dr. Elizabeth Chacko who teaches Geography at George Washington University) has the ability to switch between two modes of speaking. She speaks absolutely like an Indian speaking English when she's in India. But when she's teaching at her US university, she eases into an American accent.
Joe
Joe read a poem by W.H. Auden, a poet who was selected for a previous session by Kumkum in June 2025, when she read what is called an ekphrastic poem by Auden on Pieter Brueghel’s painting Landscape with The Fall of Icarus.
But the poem Joe chose by Auden was not an ekphrastic poem (i.e. a poem in which a painting, sculpture, or other work of visual art is described in detail), but more like the one Thomo chose, namely the lyrics of a song composition by Benjamin Britten, the British composer. It is meant to honour St. Cecilia, who’s regarded as the patron saint of music and musicians. Auden wrote it for Britten’s birthday which happens to fall on the feast day of St. Cecilia on Nov 22.
Joe was casting around for a poem to remember his sister, Cecilia Paul née Cleetus, who died on Oct 3, and came upon this poem which was a collaboration between poet and composer. It's called Hymn to St. Cecilia. Joe read the first two of the three parts.
In Part I Auden recounts the martyrdom of St. Cecilia in the 4th century AD. She is considered the patron saint of music and there’s a lovely painting by Orazio Gentileschi depicting her playing the pipe organ (which she was supposed to have invented) with an angel nearby:
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St. Cecilia with an Angel by Baroque master Orazio Gentileschi (father of the renowned Artemesia Gentileschi). The organ is the symbol of St Cecilia
She was martyred and hence the phrase ’translated daughter’ (transported to heaven) in the second last line of Part I:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.
'Translated' could also mean Cecilia is the muse who “translates” the chaotic or meaningless sounds of the world into the harmonious arrangements of music and poetry.
The reference to Aphrodite (Venus) recalls the Botticelli painting of the Birth of Venus, rising in a seashell, Venus being the goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation – the public can view this spectacular painting at the Uffizi Galleries in Firenze:
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation, Roman equivalent Venus, sacred symbols include the dove, myrtle, rose, apple, and goose
Venus is said to have been excited by Cecilia’s music, and even the angels came out dancing to her melody. This hymn was written by Auden to celebrate St. Cecilia’s birthday on Nov 22, which was also Britten’s birthday. Many composers and poets have composed odes and chorales for her. The present one is beautiful – if you want you can listen to it here:
Part II of Auden’s poem needs interpretation and reflection. It says several things about music tersely.
I cannot grow …
– one meaning could be that music is bare, abstract; another that the artist has entered a dry state in which there is nothing at hand to inspire. ‘No shadow’ could mean the artist is in a state of innocence, empty, waiting.
I cannot err;
There is no creature
Whom I belong to
– meaning music is universal, once produced it belongs to everyone. Music is not to make moral judgments with.
All you lived through,
Dancing because you
No longer need it
– difficult to make out what Auden means. Perhaps, that your experience, what you have lived through, produces the art or the music. But once it is out there the art no longer needs you, nor you it.
I shall never be
Different. Love me.
– this has a tender ending. As if to say, although I have produced some art or music, I still need your love, because the art does not necessarily transform me, the artist. I am the same as before.
I am leaving Part III for readers to reflect upon. I like this line –
O wear your tribulation like a rose.
Poet Bio
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W.H. Auden (1907 - 1973), at age 39
W.H. Auden was one of the great poets of the 20th century. His style evolved over the 50 years of his career, His philosophical beliefs changed from humanistic to Anglo-Catholic religious. He mastered an extraordinary range of forms. He wrote book length poems and also brief epigrams. T.S. Eliot criticised some of his early poetry for ‘knottiness’, that is, for being unnecessarily difficult. But that changed. He is often remembered for his Funeral Blues, recited in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral, recited by the character Matthew at the funeral of his partner Gareth.
Early Life
Born Wystan Hugh Auden in York, England in 1907, he was raised in a professional, intellectual household. His father was a prominent physician and his mother a strict Anglican, both of whom exerted a strong influence on his poetry, seeding interests in science, mythology, and religion that would last a lifetime. Auden initially studied biology and engineering at Oxford before switching to English, a decision that marked his full commitment to poetry. At university, he became the undisputed central figure of a left-wing literary group dubbed the ‘Auden Generation,’ which included Stephen Spender, Cecil Day-Lewis, and Louis MacNeice. This group was deeply engaged with the social crises of the 1930s, and their work often reflected Marxism.
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Poets Louis MacNeice, Ted Hughes, TS Eliot, WH Auden and Stephen Spender at a Faber party in the late 1950s © Mark Gerson-The National Portrait Gallery
Poets Louis MacNeice, Ted Hughes, TS Eliot, WH Auden and Stephen Spender at a Faber party in the late 1950s © Mark Gerson-The National Portrait Gallery
It is interesting to recall that T.S. Eliot, the arbiter for all poetry published by Faber & Faber, rejected Auden’s first submission, saying “I do not feel that any of the enclosed is quite right, but I should be very interested to follow your work.” He added, “I suggest that whenever you happen to be in London you might let me know and I should be very glad if you cared to come to see me.” Auden was reportedly “not disheartened by this response,” seeing it as ‘quite complimentary’ given Eliot's reserved nature. Later Eliot went on to publish dozens of Auden’s collections. T.S. Eliot was famous for his rejections of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Ulysses by James Joyce.
Auden’s first collection, Poems (1930), immediately established his reputation. The poems were fragmentary and terse, relying on concrete images and colloquial language to convey his political and psychological concerns; the influences of Freud and Marx are present. Throughout the 1930s, his work as a traveler and documentarian of the age deepened, culminating in powerful works like his poem Spain, based on his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, and Journey to a War, a travel book written with his friend and collaborator Christopher Isherwood, also a homosexual person like Auden, but more public about his sexual preference than Auden.
The Move to America and a Spiritual Shift
In 1939 he emigrated to the United States. This decision, though viewed by some in Britain as a desertion, was for Auden, a necessary break to forge a new artistic and personal identity. In America, he met the poet Chester Kallman, who became his lifelong lover and collaborator. It was also during this period that he experienced a profound reconversion to the Anglican Christian faith, a shift that would fundamentally reorient his poetry.
He moved away from the political voice of his youth toward a more personal, moral, and religious one. He began to view art not as a tool for political change but as a means of seeking truth and order in a chaotic world. His first major American volume, Another Time (1940), contains some of his most famous and enduring poems, including September 1, 1939 and Musée des Beaux Arts, a meditation on human suffering inspired by the Bruegel painting (which was KumKum’s poem for the June 2025 reading). His 1947 long poem, The Age of Anxiety, explored four characters’ search for meaning in a postwar world; it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and cemented his American reputation.
Master of Form and Later Years
Auden was renowned for his formidable technique and inventive use of language. His poetry is considered versatile and inventive, seamlessly incorporating a vast range of scientific knowledge and everyday speech. He was a prolific critic and, especially with Kallman, a gifted librettist, collaborating on operas with composers like Benjamin Britten, Igor Stravinsky, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (English versions of The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni). Their most famous collaboration, The Rake's Progress with Stravinsky, remains a staple of the operatic repertoire.
In his later years, Auden divided his time between New York City and a home in Kirchstetten, Austria, where he stayed in summer with his long-time companion, the poet Chester Kallman. Volumes like Nones (1951), The Shield of Achilles (1955)—which won a National Book Award—and Thank You, Fog (published posthumously) continued to demonstrate his lexical range and humanitarian concerns. He remained a towering figure in literature, and was awarded the1967 National Medal for Literature, an American award that recognised distinguished and continuing contributions to literature.
Since his death in 1973, Auden's reputation has only grown. A footnote. One of the poignant features of life for homosexual artists is how rare it is for them to attain permanence in relationships, which they most often desire. Auden didn’t achieve it with Kallman. A recent article in the The Guardian newspaper indicates how Auden developed a deep and lasting friendship with a Viennese car mechanic who burgled his house!
Kavita
She read a poem by Ada Limón, an American poet of Mexican-American descent. She grew up in Sonoma, California. She's the daughter of Ken Limón and Stacey Brady, the latter being a cover artist for her poet daughter’s books.
Ada Limón attended drama school at the University of Washington. Upon graduation, she received a fellowship to live and write at the Fine Arts Work Center in Massachusetts. To support her writing career, she worked in marketing for Condé Nast.
After 12 years in New York, where she worked for various magazines such as GQ, Travel and Leisure, etc. Limón's first book, Lucky Wreck, was a winner of the Autumn House Poetry Prize in the year 2005. Then her second book, The Big Fake World, was a winner of the Pearl Poetry Prize.
Ada Limón, born 1976 – Photo by Lucas Marquardt
Limón was nominated the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States on July 12, 2022. This made her the first Latina to be a Poet Laureate of the United States. She was reappointed for a two-year second term that ran from September 2023 to April 2025.
From 2022 to 2025, she was a Consultant for the Poet Laureate Foundation. She lives at present in Lexington, Kentucky, and Sonoma, California, and is married to Lucas Marquardt.
Kavita chose a poem called The Conditional, which is about uncertainty. Life is uncertain, and beauty is found in this unpredictability. She uses nature's elements like the sun and the moon, to symbolise the ups and downs of life. The poem concludes with hope and gratitude for being alive and being together in the present.
There are bleak times in the beginning, but by the end, there is hope, and you're living for the moment, you live for today. That is how to take life: live for today, and carry on.
Kavita read the short poem.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
…That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.
It's a very simple poem. Positive, hopeful, and living for the moment. It's like when you're feeling lucky that you are there. To be alive is to be lucky in spite of everything around.
We can't say anything about the future. What's going to happen tomorrow, no one knows. We don't have the time today to waste on tomorrow. We have to live for the moment. We should enjoy the most.
People are working hard, slogging away, thinking for the future, for their children and all that. And then they’re not there to enjoy it. So many things we keep planning and it doesn't work.
KumKum
KumKum having lunch at an alfresco restaurant in Arlington, MA, on Sept 9, 2025
KumKum first came to know about the poem she selected through an article in The New York Times, published on August 27, 2025, by A. O. Scott, a longtime critic for the paper, titled I Can’t Look Away From This Poem About Looking. The Times introduced the piece with the line: “Our critic A. O. Scott goes into a well with Robert Frost.” The article is indeed as deep and insightful as that metaphor suggests.
Scott describes the poem For Once, Then, Something as “a reflection on reflecting – on looking and thinking – that teases the double meaning of the word without using it once.”
Robert Frost – man peering into a well
In the poem, the speaker (presumably Frost himself) kneels beside a well and gazes into the water. Ordinarily, he sees only his own reflection, along with the ferns around the well and the clouds above. Others who peer into the well mock him, claiming he never sees beyond the surface that mirrors his face. But once – for a fleeting moment – the poet thinks he glimpses something deeper, something white and mysterious at the bottom of the well. Before he can discern what it is, a drop of water from the ferns ripples the surface, blurring his reflection and erasing the vision.
There is a clear metaphor in the man looking into the well and gazing to find something. The well symbolises the corners of the universe where truth may lie, and the act of looking into it represents the human search for knowledge and understanding. Most of the time the observer is prevented from seeing into the depths by hiser own biases and lack of objectivity. But there is vouchsafed to the man a sudden glimpse of Something, but alas it recedes from sight because of an external interference, a drop of water that ripples the surface and causes noise. The rest of the poem is speculation: what was it he saw? A glimpse of reality beyond the self? Or was it just a simple pebble?
What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.
The poem is written in a classical meter called hendecasyllabics, an 11-syllable line that Frost borrowed from the Roman poet Catullus. Why this choice for a simple rural scene, we do not know. Latin meter depends on the number of syllables, here 11 per line; whereas English poetry is accentual where besides the quantity of syllables, the placing of the accents within the line matters and determines the meter.
The word ‘Something,’ though vague and casual, is the crux of the poem according to critic A.O. Scott – “its strongest, most insistent echo, sounding through the beginning, middle, and end, anchoring the meaning.”
The reference to Narcissus in the poem is evident – because the original exemplar of fellows who look at their reflection in the water, is Narcissus – the handsome youth who rejects the love of all who pursue him, leading him to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. He becomes consumed by this unrequited love, wasting away until he dies, and the narcissus flower (daffodil) is said to have bloomed in his place.
Our modern narcissist is, of course, Mr. Donald Trump. He won’t allow the water to be stirred, even by a drop falling, because he always wants to see himself and only himself in every issue, and wishes to monopolise every scene, if possible with a golden crown or halo. Fortunately for him, he has a thousand people around him, not only in the United States, everywhere he goes – just wanting to reflect his glory back to him and fawn upon him by saying how great he is, and then bestowing royal gifts on him. Most recently the Korean President Lee Jae Myung has been at this game presenting Mr Trump a replica of the Korean crown; the newly elected Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi has followed suit in a toadying manner, and of course his beloved boot-licker Mr Keir Starmer, PM of Britain. Everybody is singing hosannas to Mr Trump, genuflecting and exclaiming ‘You are the greatest.’
Hence, we conclude the salient occurrence in the poem is Frost causing the water to be stirred, whether by human agency or fate – for suddenly Mr Narcissus doesn’t look so other-worldly, but dissolves into ripples. The fact that the water is stirred is the actual point of relief in this poem.
Poet’s Biography
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Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)
Robert Frost (1874 – 1963) was one of the most celebrated American poets of the 20th century. His work remains deeply popular in the United States for its portrayal of rural New England life and its use of everyday speech.
Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874. After his father’s death, his family moved to Massachusetts. He attended Dartmouth College and later Harvard University but did not graduate from either. Over the years, Frost worked as a teacher and farmer before moving to England with his family, where his first two poetry collections were published, A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914).
Upon returning to the United States in 1915, Frost settled on a farm in New Hampshire. He continued to write, teach, and farm, eventually gaining immense fame. He won four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, an unprecedented achievement. Among his best-known poems are The Road Not Taken and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
In 1961, Frost had the honour of reciting a poem at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. He died in 1963, leaving behind a lasting legacy as one of America’s defining poetic voices.
Pamela
The poems Pamela chose were Another Country and Hard Prayer by Ryan Teitman.
Poet Bio
Ryan Teitman was born in Philadelphia in 1976. Teitman, a 2004 graduate of Penn State‘s English Department, is the author of the poetry collection Litany for the City, selected by Jane Hershfield as the winner of the A.Poulin Jr. Prize and published by BOA Editions, a Rochester New York based independent, nonprofit publisher of poetry, fiction, and poetry-in-translation. He worked as a newspaper reporter in Philadelphia before earning an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English at Indiana University.
Pamela liked this quote of his:
Every clock in our house
had unfinished business
Every note my father
struck in the dark
before he left for work
was another life waiting
(from Hard Light Through Hemlock by Ryan Teitman)
Teitman, formerly the Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford, recently received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the recipient of an Association of Writers Program Intro Journal Award in poetry, the winner of the Mid-American Review's Fineline Competition, and a finalist for a Ruth Lilly Fellowship. His poems have appeared in Ninth Letter, The Southern Review, Sycamore Review, Third Coast and many other journals. He currently works as the Emerging Writing Lecturer at Gettysburg College.
Ryan Teitman was born in 1976
Pamela found the following quotes of Teitman during an interview conducted on 20th March 2013, by a reviewer of his debut book Litany for the City.
Teitman was asked how religion and faith factor into his writing.
He answered: “I was raised a Catholic and it influenced the way I think about language.The poetic devices I tend to gravitate to (litany, anaphora, repetition) are the ones I heard on Sundays at Mass. As poet, I believe that language has power, and the first place I learned that was in the church. In the Mass, the priest turns the bread and wine into flesh and blood through prayer – through language. And one of the core beliefs of Catholicism is that the transformation is not metaphorical. Its literal. Seeing words have that kind of power had a profound impact on me.”
Interviewer: Tell us a little about your writing process, e.g. do you write daily? Do you prefer to write in silence, or while walking? What inspires you?
RT: I wish I wrote daily. But I'm just not like that – I go through spurts; I'll write furiously for a few weeks, then not write anything for a month. I tend to write better in the mornings. I'm useless, creatively, after 8 pm.
Interviewer: When you write, do you imagine a reader? If so, what type of a reader?
RT: It sounds incredibly self-centered, but my ideal reader is me. Let me explain that: I love reading and I love poetry. I know the feeling of reading a poem that you absolutely love, a poem that makes you want to tell someone about it. I once stopped a conversation and made an entire room listen to a poem I had read in a literary journal. That's the kind of poem that I, as a reader, would want to share with others.
Interviewer: Generally speaking, how do you approach revision? Do you use a checklist or have any tried-and-true practices?
RT: I peck away at poems for a long time. I seem to do my best revising when I walk away and let the poem sit in the back of my brain for a while. I get ideas for revision in the shower or while I am doing something completely unrelated to writing. When I let my mind wander, I'll find I have rewritten a line or image in my head. One thing that's always important is reading a poem out loud. If my poem doesn't sound right out loud, that means it's not right on the page.
The poem Another Country covers themes like childhood, fathers, migration and sons. When someone asked the meaning of that poem, Pamela said that it could mean a generation gap between a father and a son, and it could also mean that they were literally far apart in different countries. There was still another thought expressed by Kumkum that the father was probably dead – lost in war or some mishap.
Pamela said that she liked the portrayal of the mother as someone who tries to fit her child to a suit, she liked some of the poetic phrases used:
I wait for my father
the way a dancer
waits for music......
Around her neck
my mother's pearls
clink like teeth....
My blood waits
behind my chest......
The opening line of the poem is an acknowledgement of Teitman being inspired by the poem The Map by Larry Levis:
The days unfold
like maps,...
Hard Prayer raises the question whether Saint Francis held two pears in his cupped hands until they rotted? Joe said that he can recall no such reference in the literature of St Francis of Assisi. But there is the Irish Saint Kevin of Glendalough who according to legend, was standing in prayer with his arms outstretched in the form of a cross, when a blackbird came and built a nest in his hand. In an act of extreme patience and piety, Kevin remained perfectly still, in the same position, until the eggs hatched and the baby birds were fledged and flew away. The kind of stuff people are ready to believe about saints! Indeed Seamus Heaney wrote a poem about it.
Pamela liked the last part of the poem:
… I walk home
though streets as quiet as confessionals.
Traffic lights shepherd nothing
but wind. I want to live
inside this silence—and ruin it.
Saras
Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was a Palestinian poet and author – considered Palestine’s national poet, and known as a resistance poet. In 1988 Darwish wrote the Palestinian Declaration which was the formal declaration of a state of Palestine. He served as an editor for several literary magazines in Israel and the Palestinian territories. He wrote in Arabic and spoke English, French, and Hebrew.
As a child his village was captured and razed to the ground by Israeli forces and the family fled to Lebanon. They returned to the Acre area in Israel a year later. Darwish and his family were never granted citizenship of Israel under their 1952 citizenship law and were considered internal refugees or “present-absent aliens.”
By the age of 17, he was writing poetry about the suffering of the refugees of the Nakba (the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs from their lands by the Israeli state) and began reciting his poems at poetry festivals. Darwish published his first book of poetry Wingless Birds, at the age of 19. He has published more than 30 volumes of poetry and 8 books of verse in his lifetime. In the 1960s Darwish was imprisoned for reciting poetry and travelling between villages without a permit. He was considered a resistance poet and placed under house arrest.
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Mahmoud Darwish (1941 – 2008) photo 2005 by Leonardo Cendamo—Hulton Archive
In 1965, Darwish read his poem Identity Card to a crowd in a Nazareth movie house to a tumultuous reaction. It eventually became a protest song that enraged Israeli politicians. His 1966 poem To My Mother became and unofficial Palestinian anthem. Darwish went into exile in 1970 returning to live in Ramallah after the signing of the Oslo Accords, a series of agreements signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) between 1993 and 1999, which were intended to create a peace process for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Darwish initially wrote in the classic Arab style, mono rhymed and adhering to traditional Arab poetry. By 1970 he had begun to adopt a free verse technique and became more personal and flexible in his use of language. Slogans and declarative language were replaced with indirect and seemingly apolitical statements, though politics was never far away.
Assimilating centuries of Arabic poetic forms and applying the chisel of modern sensibility to the richly veined ore of its literary past, Darwish subjected his art to the impress of exile and to his own demand that the work remain true to self, independent of its critical or public reception.
Many of his poems have become lasting and recognisable songs, the most famous of which Rita and the Rifle is the poem he wrote about the Jewish girl Rita he fell in love with when he was 18. The first line reads:
There’s a rifle between Rita and me
Darwish admired the Hebrew poet Yehuda Amichai (read earlier at KRG by KumKum) but as Darwish says,
His poetry put a challenge to me, because we write about the same place. He wants to use the landscape and history for his own benefit, based on my destroyed identity. So we have a competition: who is the owner of the language of this land? Who loves it more? Who writes it better?
Darwish died on 9th August 2008, following heart surgery.
Sources :
Here is a clip from youtube of the wonderful Benedict Cumberbatch reciting On this earth interspersed with the original version of the poem.
Saras found this translation better but could not the credit for the translator, hence did not take it.
Saras read two poems by Mahmoud Darwish
On this Earth
Darwish talks how beauty persists even in times of despair, giving profound reasons to live. Life is not made of grand victories but consists of fragile irreplaceable things. The poem is not only about Palestine. Each of us has known moments where hope seemed absent, yet something small – a gesture, a song, a scent – rekindles the sense that life is still worth living. The line calls upon you to notice what, here and now, makes our earth worth inhabiting.
It asks: what deserves life in your world? The answer need not be large; it may be a single flower, a word, a face.
And the poet talks about “mothers living on a flute's sigh.” The flute's sigh is a very delicate sound, weightless and insubstantial. Mothers are sustained by the thinnest of sounds that evoke memories. Their life is so difficult, but they are the ones who hold the collective memory together, the mothers and the memories. So, the invader's fear of memories is linked with that.
a woman
keeping her apricots ripe after forty,
– this refers to a woman staying beautiful and engaging and alive even after 40.
To Our Land
Darwish speaks about the struggle of the Palestinian people when they were forced to leave their homes, and their longing to return. It describes Palestine as a sesame seed and poor as a grouse’s wings with an “identity wound” and a ‘map of absence’. He calls it the ‘prize of war.’
In another poem, The war will end Darwish writes:
The war will end
The leaders will shake hands
The old woman will keep waiting
for her martyred son.
That girl will wait for her beloved husband
and those children will wait
for their heroic father
I don't know who sold our homeland
but I know who paid the price.
He says, while leaders may end the conflict and shake hands, the personal sufferings of civilians, mothers, wives, and children endures. This reminded Joe of a quote:
Of those who die in war, only very few really wanted it. Those who wanted it are very rarely among the victims – from 1948: A Soldier’s Tale By Uri Avnery
Of those who die in war, only very few really wanted it. Those who wanted it are very rarely among the victims – from 1948: A Soldier’s Tale By Uri Avnery
Joe wore a kaffiyeh saying he celebrates all Palestinians who are suffering for their land, all the people who are being killed, even as we speak today of poetry.
Thomo
We've done other songs of Bob Dylan before, like The Times They Are A-Changin'
But each song is so different from the other. It's worth doing one more. Dylan, as we all know, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2016 for “creating new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” It was for transforming popular song into a form of high literary art. His works span protest, surrealism, mythology and modern consciousness, linking folk tradition with modernist poetry.
In Thomo’s selection, Mr. Tambourine Man, Bob Dylan seems to address a wandering musician who plays a hypnotic tune. He asks the tambourine man to play a song and take him for a trip upon his magic swirling ship, inviting him to another world where time, responsibility and weariness fade away. At its heart, Mr. Tambourine Man is about a search for freedom, escape and transcendence through imagination and music.
The lyrics have lines like,
Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
These lines have been described as pure surrealistic poetry, fluid, dreamlike, filled with hallucinatory imagery and give the impression that Dylan wants to be carried away into the creative hallucinatory world of his own consciousness, where ideas drift like smoke.
Bob Dylan in 1964 when he wrote Mr. Tambourine Man
That is why Mr. Tambourine Man is among the six Dylan songs that the Nobel Committee considered when it awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. The others were Blowing in the Wind, The Times They Are a-Changing, Desolation Row, Like a Rolling Stone and A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall.
Many wondered whether Dylan had actually accepted the Nobel Prize because he was not there at the official ceremony. Bob Dylan did indeed accept the Nobel Prize in literature, but not at the official joint ceremony along with the other Nobel laureates, but in a private ceremony in Stockholm in April 2017. Dylan missed the official ceremony in December 2016 because of prior concert commitments and received his medal during a concert stop in Stockholm. He also delivered his Nobel lecture at a later time – all Nobel laureates have to deliver a lecture in order to receive the prize.
Thomo was going to sing the lyrics. He was not sure of a few lines where it doesn't follow a pattern. We have about six or seven lines and some stanzas will have four, and some will have eight. There is not much variation in the tune. But suddenly it takes off into another realm.
Everyone appreciated the singing and congratulated Thomo for bringing the lyrics to life with the melody Dylan set it to. “Very nice, lovely,” they commented in unison, and thanked Thomo, “We really love this.” Bob Dylan later identified the guitar player Bruce Langhorne as the Tambourine Man, who inspired this song.
Arundhaty
Though she had not planned to participate thinking she would be busy with her family, she got free and decided to butt in and recite a poem which her daughter Shubhra chose for her, titled Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver. The poet got a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and National Book Award in 1992. More about her can be found in the bio at the Oct 2022 poetry reading.
Mary Oliver's poetry derives a lot of inspiration from nature; she used to go for long solitary walks, and observed the world with the wonder and clarity of a child. Her poetry is marked by vivid imagery and unadorned language, blessed with a reverent awareness of life's simplicity and beauty.
Mary Oliver out on a walk in nature
Her poetry is grounded in the landscape of Ohio, where she grew up, and in New England, her adopted home. She was influenced by Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau. Oliver's work offers a modern kind of romanticism, one that dissolves boundaries between nature and the observing self.
She once recounted finding herself in the woods without a pen, and after that began hiding pencils in trees so she would never be unprepared to write amidst nature. She often carried a small hand-sewn notebook for jotting down impressions in pages. Oliver was sometimes called a patroller of wetlands, and was frequently compared to Emily Dickinson for her love of solitude and the contemplative inner life.
The Poems
Devika – The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
PART ONE
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard.
He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred.
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord’s daughter,
The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—
“One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.”
He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(O, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.
PART TWO
He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;
And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,
When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching—
Marching—marching—
King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.
They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.
But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.
They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.
They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast!
“Now, keep good watch!” and they kissed her. She heard the doomed man say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!
She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!
The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest.
Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast.
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love’s refrain.
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horsehoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The red coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still.
Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.
He turned. He spurred to the west; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.
Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.
Blood red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.
. . .
And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
Geetha – Inviting a Friend to Supper by Ben Jonson
Tonight, grave sir, both my poor house, and I
Do equally desire your company;
Not that we think us worthy such a guest,
But that your worth will dignify our feast
With those that come, whose grace may make that seem
Something, which else could hope for no esteem.
It is the fair acceptance, sir, creates
The entertainment perfect, not the cates.
Yet shall you have, to rectify your palate,
An olive, capers, or some better salad
Ushering the mutton; with a short-legged hen,
If we can get her, full of eggs, and then
Lemons, and wine for sauce; to these a cony
Is not to be despaired of, for our money;
And, though fowl now be scarce, yet there are clerks,
The sky not falling, think we may have larks.
I’ll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come:
Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some
May yet be there, and godwit, if we can;
Knat, rail, and ruff too. Howsoe’er, my man
Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus,
Livy, or of some better book to us,
Of which we’ll speak our minds, amidst our meat;
And I’ll profess no verses to repeat.
To this, if ought appear which I not know of,
That will the pastry, not my paper, show of.
Digestive cheese and fruit there sure will be;
But that which most doth take my Muse and me,
Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine,
Which is the Mermaid’s now, but shall be mine;
Of which had Horace, or Anacreon tasted,
Their lives, as so their lines, till now had lasted.
Tobacco, nectar, or the Thespian spring,
Are all but Luther's beer to this I sing.
Of this we will sup free, but moderately,
And we will have no Pooley, or Parrot by,
Nor shall our cups make any guilty men;
But, at our parting we will be as when
We innocently met. No simple word
That shall be uttered at our mirthful board,
Shall make us sad next morning or affright
The liberty that we’ll enjoy tonight.
Joe – Hymn to St. Cecilia, composition by Benjamin Britten, Words by W. H. Auden
Part I
In a garden shady this holy lady
With reverent cadence and subtle psalm,
Like a black swan as death came on
Poured forth her song in perfect calm:
And by ocean's margin this innocent virgin
Constructed an organ to enlarge her prayer,
And notes tremendous from her great engine
Thundered out on the Roman air.
Blonde Aphrodite rose up excited,
Moved to delight by the melody,
White as an orchid she rode quite naked
In an oyster shell on top of the sea;
At sounds so entrancing the angels dancing
Came out of their trance into time again,
And around the wicked in Hell's abysses
The huge flame flickered and eased their pain.
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.
Part II
I cannot grow;
I have no shadow
To run away from,
I only play.
I cannot err;
There is no creature
Whom I belong to,
Whom I could wrong.
I am defeat
When it knows it
Can now do nothing
By suffering.
All you lived through,
Dancing because you
No longer need it
For any deed.
I shall never be
Different. Love me.
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.
Part III (not to be recited at the session)
O ear whose creatures cannot wish to fall,
O calm of spaces unafraid of weight,
Where Sorrow is herself, forgetting all
The gaucheness of her adolescent state,
Where Hope within the altogether strange
From every outworn image is released,
And Dread born whole and normal like a beast
Into a world of truths that never change:
Restore our fallen day; O re-arrange.
O dear white children casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages,
So small beside their large confusing words,
So gay against the greater silences
Of dreadful things you did: O hang the head,
Impetuous child with the tremendous brain,
O weep, child, weep, O weep away the stain,
Lost innocence who wished your lover dead,
Weep for the lives your wishes never led.
O cry created as the bow of sin
Is drawn across our trembling violin.
O weep, child, weep, O weep away the stain.
O law drummed out by hearts against the still
Long winter of our intellectual will.
That what has been may never be again.
O flute that throbs with the thanksgiving breath
Of convalescents on the shores of death.
O bless the freedom that you never chose.
O trumpets that unguarded children blow
About the fortress of their inner foe.
O wear your tribulation like a rose.
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.
Text and music sheets can be found at:
Kavita – The Conditional by Ada Limón
Say tomorrow doesn’t come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.
KumKum – For Once, Then, Something by Robert Frost
Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.
Pamela – two poems by Ryan Teitman
1. Another Country
The days unfold
like maps. Fresh dirt
in the garden, black
as cake, grows warm.
The roses perform
a silent recital,
each playing its part
from memory. I wait
for my father the way
men wait for a train.
I wait for my father
the way a dancer
waits for music.
My mother is a curtain
in the window.
She calls me in
to fit my shadow
for a suit. I keep still
as she pinches the tape
around its wrist.
Around her neck
my mother’s pearls
clink like teeth.
Your shadow grows
faster than you do,
she says. She says
that waiting is
a kind of dancing.
At night I dance
with the stillness.
My blood waits
behind my chest
like a man behind
a locked door.
My father waits
in another country.
2. Hard Prayer
I walk home through the city.
The stars wait behind the clouds
like an orchestra for a conductor
and windows yawn open
all through the neighborhood.
Streetlights die off.
Storefronts clap shut. I stop
at a pearing tree, whose branches
curtsy with fruit. Saint Francis
carried two pears in his cupped hands
for months, until the sweetness
of rot called down hundreds of birds.
They perched across his body,
and he wore the flock like a coat
to survive the winter. My jacket
keeps out the chill. I walk home
though streets as quiet as confessionals.
Traffic lights shepherd nothing
but wind. I want to live
inside this silence—and ruin it.
Saras – 2 poems by Mahmoud Darwish
1. On this Earth
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April's hesitation, the
aroma of bread
at dawn, a woman's point of view about men, the works of Aeschylus, the beginning
of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute's sigh and the invaders' fear
of memories.
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: the final days of
September, a woman
keeping her apricots ripe after forty, the hour of sunlight in prison, a cloud
reflecting a swarm
of creatures, the peoples' applause for those who face death with a smile, a tyrant's fear of songs.
We have on this earth what makes life worth living: on this earth, the Lady of Earth,
mother of all beginnings and ends. She was called Palestine. Her name later became
Palestine. My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.
(translated From Unfortunately It was Paradise, 2003, by Karim Abuawad)
2. To Our Land
To our land,
and it is the one near the word of god,
a ceiling of clouds
To our land,
and it is the one far from the adjectives of nouns,
the map of absence
To our land,
and it is the one tiny as a sesame seed,
a heavenly horizon ... and a hidden chasm
To our land,
and it is the one poor as a grouse’s wings,
holy books ... and an identity wound
To our land,
and it is the one surrounded with torn hills,
the ambush of a new past
To our land, and it is a prize of war,
the freedom to die from longing and burning
and our land, in its bloodied night,
is a jewel that glimmers for the far upon the far
and illuminates what’s outside it ...
As for us, inside,
we suffocate more!
(From The Butterfly’s Burden, 2007 translated by Fady Joudah)
Shoba – 2 poems by Imtiaz Dharker
1. Minority
I was born a foreigner.
I carried on from there
to become a foreigner everywhere
I went, even in the place
planted with my relatives,
six-foot tubers sprouting roots,
their fingers and faces pushing up
new shoots of maize and sugar cane.
All kinds of places and groups
of people who have an admirable
history would, almost certainly,
distance themselves from me.
I don’t fit,
like a clumsily-translated poem;
like food cooked in milk of coconut
where you expected ghee or cream,
the unexpected aftertaste
of cardamom or neem.
There’s always that point where
the language flips
into an unfamiliar taste;
where words tumble over
a cunning tripwire on the tongue;
where the frame slips,
the reception of an image
not quite tuned, ghost-outlined,
that signals, in their midst,
an alien.
And so I scratch, scratch
through the night, at this
growing scab on black on white.
Everyone has the right
to infiltrate a piece of paper.
A page doesn’t fight back.
And, who knows, these lines
may scratch their way
into your head –
through all the chatter of community,
family, clattering spoons,
children being fed –
immigrate into your bed,
squat in your home,
and in a corner, eat your bread,
until, one day, you meet
the stranger sidling down your street,
realise you know the face
simplified to bone,
look into its outcast eyes
and recognise it as your own.
2. Front Door
Wherever I have lived,
walking out of the front door
every morning
means crossing over
to a foreign country.
One language inside the house,
another out.
The food and clothes
and customs change.
The fingers on my hand turn
into forks.
I call it adaptation
when my tongue switches
from one grammar to another,
but the truth is I’m addicted now,
high on the rush
of daily displacement,
speeding to a different time zone,
heading into altered weather,
landing as another person.
Don’t think I haven’t noticed
you’re on the same trip too.
Thomo – Bob Dylan Mr. Tambourine Man, Song by Bob Dylan ‧ 1965
Lyrics
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you
Though I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you
Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you
Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’, swingin’ madly across the sun
It’s not aimed at anyone, it’s just escapin’ on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin’
And if you hear vague traces of skippin’ reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn’t pay it any mind
It’s just a shadow you’re seein’ that he’s chasing
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you
Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you
(https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/mr-tambourine-man/)
Arundhaty – Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety –
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
Thank you Joe, for such a detailed and vivid detailing of our poetry session of October. As usual the images you select are a treat in themselves.
ReplyDeleteThank you Joe for yet another splendid blog, so interesting with details that make our poems so much more vibrant and worth remembering.
ReplyDelete