Ten of us participated in a session that featured poets, all of whom had been recited before with the exception of Bruce Springsteen, a singer-songwriter who penned the lyrics of a contemporary protest song.
Arundhaty gave us an ekphrastic anti-war poem by Mary Oliver that takes off on a painting of blue horses by Franz Marc.
I would rather die than try to explain to the blue horses
what war is.
They would either faint in horror, or simply
find it impossible to believe.
Devika chose a cryptic poem by Emily Dickinson in which she seems to dare God to take away a beloved person she has known.
Significance that each has lived
The other to detect
Discovery not God himself
Could now annihilate
Geetha recited the ‘dub’ poet Benjamin Zephaniah who performs on stage, reciting poems mostly to reggae rhythms.
Dis poetry is like a riddim dat drops
De tongue fires a riddim dat shoots like shots
Dis poetry is designed fe rantin
Dance hall style, big mouth chanting,
Joe was upset by the menacing way in which US Immigration authorities used military-style kidnaps to strike fear into the hearts of non-whites in America. It was so antithetical to the tenets of freedom of life and liberty enshrined in the US Constitution that it horrified many Americans; Bruce Springsteen gave voice to the horror in the song, The Streets of Minneapolis.
Now they say they're here to uphold the law
But they trample on our rights
If your skin is black or brown, my friend
You can be questioned or deported on sight
KumKum read a ’tiny’ 10-line poem by Louise Glück that ends abruptly with the cry
I want you.
Joe mentioned that when he read Louise Glück, he bought her volume of Poems 1962-2012. After reading almost the whole collection he chose a few that he could make sense of. But later he had a dream conversation with the poet in verse which is reported in the text below.
Pamela liked Mary Oliver’s poetry for its simplicity and freedom from constraints; reassuringly the poet states –
I’m not trying to be wise, that would be foolish.
I’m just chattering.
Priya took on Rabindranath Tagore. There are more distinct blog posts on KRG’s website on him than on any other poet – the posts were to celebrate his 150th Birth anniversary in 2011. The eighth such post contains a song that pulls at the heartstrings, no matter how many times one hears it. That a poet could express such a yearning for a person, indirectly, is a miracle. In Hemanta Mukherjee’s baritone voce it takes on the life Tagore meant to infuse into the words. Listen here to the song Tumi Ki Kebali Chabi. The translation is Joe’s. Has any poet expressed the source of his muse better? –
kabir antharer tumi kabi
you are the poet within the poet
Saras took up Robert Service in an anti-war poem he wrote on the eve of WWI:
Rumours of world-war are rife,
Armageddon draweth near.
If your carcase you would save,
Hear, oh hear, the dreadful drum!
Fly to forest, cower in cave . . .
Brother, heed the wrath to come!
Shoba’s choice of England’s great poet Alfred Lord Tennyson was characterised by an elegiac poem which he derived from that fifteenth-century classic of English, Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur. It contains the famous quote:
The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways
Thomo chose the first Duino Elegy of Rilke, which begins an intensely religious, mystical group of poems that employs the symbolism of angels and salvation. It begins:
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders?
He began the cycle of elegies in 1912 in the castle of Duino in Italy and completed it 10 years later in the smaller castle of Château de Muzot in the Swiss Valais. A castle composing poet, our Rilke was.
Arundhaty
Franz Marc’s Blue Horses by Mary Oliver
Franz Marc was a painter who was influenced by Vincent van Gogh and French Impressionism after trips to Paris. His style evolved from naturalism to an unique blend of expressionism, fauvism, and cubism. He used a lot of colour, and animal forms to express himself. His art was deemed degenerate by the National Socialist Party (the Nazi Party) in the 1930s, and around 130 of his works were removed from German museums.
Here is a picture of the painting:
Franz Marc’s Tower of Blue Horses. It is the picture on the cover of Mary Oliver’s book, Blue Horses
Is there a bit of cubism in this, asked a reader. It’s all cubism, actually, said Arundhaty. Mary Oliver is paying tribute to this artist who died in World War I remembering all the work he had done. And this poem is dedicated to him. It's a beautiful poem, and it's about war.
Mary Oliver on one of her nature walks
Poem – Franz Marc’s Blue Horses by Mary Oliver
Arundhaty thought this poem was very beautiful and touching – can anybody explain what war is?
I would rather die than try to explain to the blue horses
what war is.
They would either faint in horror, or simply
find it impossible to believe.
Arundhaty liked these lines, and said the desire to make something beautiful is what God puts inside each of us. The readers chimed in with their approbation.
Many poets have written poems on paintings, inspired by paintings. Last June KumKum introduced a new class of poems called Ekphrastic poems.
Arundhaty mentioned there is a walk in Subash Park tomorrow to recite poems in public. Also in Fort Kochi the day after tomorrow (Feb 22, 2026), The Road Taken, an attempt to bring the collective practice of poetry writing to public spaces – to bring poetry where supposedly it does not belong.
Devika:
She was reading a poem by Emily Dickinson, called Because That You're Going. The name recalls Because I could not stop for Death which is one of Emily Dickinson's most famous poems.
Emily Dickinson is the very well-known American poet and there’s an extensive bio of hers on our blog from 2024. She and Walt Whitman were more popular than even major figures of the 20th century poetry like Robert Frost, TS Eliot, and so on.
Unlike the self-printed Whitman, she rejected publication. She called it the auction of the mind of man. She didn't want any of her things published. In fact, only 10 of her poems were published in her lifetime, whereas after her death, they found she had written about 1,800 poems and quietly put them away, sewed into little fascicles, and kept them in a bureau (chest of drawers).
She became popular and well-known only later, much after her death at the age of 55.
Her poetry is simple, but it's also meditative and difficult. Her life is both known and unknown. She has kept some of her secrets perhaps forever.
She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, and she studied at Amherst Academy and then went to Mount Holyoke for some time. She didn't complete college there.
Her poetry often deals with nature and mortality. This poem is a farewell poem exploring themes of love, separation, and the anticipation of reunion in the afterlife, balancing personal grief with faith in an eternal meeting.
It's a bit depressing. Not easy. But it spoke to Devika, perhaps because of what she had been through in the recent past. She thinks a lot about death now which seems to stalk her life..
That was probably what caused her to be immersed in this poem and choose it for reading. To Joe it seemed a cryptic poem in which Dickinson seems to be defying God, daring Him to takw away the beloved person the poet has known. This quatrain is striking:
Significance that each has lived
The other to detect
Discovery not God himself
Could now annihilate
All those words and quotations are taken from the Bible. God is love, he is a jealous God, all is possible and stuff like that.
At this point Joe entered a note which is recorded in the 2014 blog post above, written after a visit to Amherst.
There was this journalist by the name of Higginson.
“ED wrote to a contributor in the Atlantic Monthly, named Thomas Higginson, sending four poems and asking his opinion: “say if my Verse is alive.” This may have been a fateful mistake, for he, not knowing that she had already written several hundred poems (her output was 1,700+ by the time she died), and being a non-poet himself and a poor judge of literary merit, as history bears out, “counselled her to work longer and harder on her poetry before she attempted its publication.” You can read more at
ED lived in a small town devoid of poets, and she had no personal contact with true literary figures. This Higginson gambit seems to have been her first and only attempt to get published, and it met with the rebuff of a man who had little capacity to enter the mind or poetry of ED.
But the world of poetry did not lose.”
Higginson was a hack who knew little about literature, and nothing about poetry. She made the mistake of submitting four poems to him, and asking him, ‘please tell me if these verses come alive for you.’
He didn't know that by that time she had already written hundreds of poems. He looked at her as some kind of tyro who was trying to write verse, and gave her some anodyne advice, and put her off, and said she had a long way to go to mature as a poet.
It's quite common that an artist or anybody, whether you sing or you write music, you will take it to somebody you think is an expert and hope the expert will give a frank opinion. But Higginson was a dunderhead, and to submit it to him was a huge mistake on her part; his flippant opinion silenced her.
But she knew that she wanted to write, and kept writing. It was not at all true that she didn't want to publish. Anybody who is a writer wants to publish, because they want to share whatever they do. What kind of artist would you be if you just painted thousands of paintings and put them away in an attic and didn't want to show it to anybody?
ED took the rejection to heart but did not lose heart, and her poetic gift was not silenced; it grew and developed and she became such an unique voice in poetry.
She also suffered from depression or something like that; reclusive by nature she was happy to have relations with people he knew. She never married but had some relationships.
Walt Whitman and ED are not contemporaries. It said that when you look at American poetry, she and Walt Whitman are considered much better poets by readers than Robert Frost, and so on.
Geetha
She found a delightful British poet of Jamaican origin, Benjamin Zephaniah (BZ). Zephaniah is the name of a prophet in the Bible.
The poet was born on 15th April in 1958, only a few ears older than Geetha, therefore. He sadly passed away in December 2023. He was a a ‘dub’ poet, actor, musician, and professor of poetry and creative writing at Brunel University .
A little bit about dub poetry. It's a form of performance poetry of Jamaican origin, which evolved out of dub music in Kingston, Jamaica in the 1970s. The term dub poetry was coined by the dub artist Linton Quasey Johnson in 1976, and he popularised it later on. It consists of spoken words using reggae rhythms. It's like conversation, actually, but it is set to rhythm. It can be quite thrilling. Geetha tried her best to do justice to it in her recitation.
BZ talks about life, everyday life, and everything comes into it. He explains that in his poetry.
Bio:
He's from the UK, and was born in Birmingham. Long ago, Amita Palat read a poem by him in 2011.
Dub poetry, D-U-B. D-U-B. That's the thing, the Reggae rhythm.
Dis poetry is like a riddim dat drops
De tongue fires a riddim dat shoots like shots
Dis poetry is designed fe rantin
Dance hall style, big mouth chanting,
Readers loved hearing the verses. A reader said she just wanted to get up and dance. Another reader liked this part:
An den I got a dread degree
In Dreadfull Ghettology.
He's talking of deeper things, but in very simple terms; he’s been heavily criticised also by people who don't know much, just like the Higginson chap who belittled Emily Dickinson.
You can hear BZ do the Reggae performance of this poem on Youtube here.
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Benjamin Zephaniah (1958– 2023) in 2018
There are many people who think BZ is no poet, but he's also been honoured a lot. Benjamin Zephaniah famously turned down an award from the British monarchy, an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), in 2003. He rejected the honour owing to his principled, lifelong opposition to the concept of the British Empire, colonialism, and slavery.
He's got many awards. In May 2011, Zephaniah accepted a year-long position as poet-in-residence at Keats House in Hampstead, London, his first residency role for more than ten years. In accepting the role, he commented: “I don't do residencies, but Keats is different. He's a one-off, and he has always been one of my favourite poets.” The same year, he was appointed professor of poetry and creative writing at Brunel University, London.
Black poetry and black literature was never given its due. Initially, they really had to make a space for themselves. Now they're right on top. This is true of the whole modern category of performance poetry.
Joe
Once again, just like the previous poem by Zephaniah, these lyrics also are meant to be sung rhythmically. It was written by Bruce Springsteen, the famous singer. Just to give a little background to the song The Streets of Minneapolis: it's a protest song and Bruce Springsteen wrote and recorded it in 48 hours as a direct response to the fatal shootings of two people, one man and one woman by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis in Jan 2026
Renee Good was a single 37-year-old mother of three children who had just moved to the city. She was a prize-winning poet and a hobby guitarist. Alex Pretti was a 37-year-old intensive care nurse for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
The song denounces the action of these federal agents, resulting in the deaths of innocent people, which Springsteen classifies as a form of state terror toward the immigrant community. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Donald Trump both referred to Renee Good as a "domestic terrorist.”
Trump and his gang may think of themselves as the original inhabitants, but we know they are the interlopers in North America; the original inhabitants have been killed by the white people long ago; very few survived and they live in miserable conditions on reservations across America.
It was the white people on behalf of whom these ICE agents were primarily going after coloured folk whom they thought were all illegal, regardless of whether they had their legal residence papers or not. These ICE agents descended on Minneapolis in the middle of winter in December 2025 and January and started arresting and terrorising people. There were thousands of them, all armed and masked like they were agents of terror.
Renee Good was killed on 7th of January, and Alex Pretti on the 24th of January.
The purpose of this song by Bruce Springsteen was as a rebuke to the Trump administration. You can imagine that the song pepped up the protesting people because they started to gather and raise slogans in the icy cold of Minneapolis. The song was released in January 2026, and it was designed as an artistic response to tragedy.
As our own Arundhati Roy points out, artists have a duty to respond to things that violate humanity, and it's not their business to stand apart as though art is something pure and above what affects common people.
Joe read the poem to remember the names of those who died on the streets of Minneapolis.
The full biography of Springsteen is given below. He was born in 1949, and is regarded not merely as a rock musician, but as a singing poet and a troubadour, who has documented America's experience over five decades. His songwriting is characterised by vivid cinematic storytelling, exploring the struggles, hopes, and the resilience of the working class, often centring on his native New Jersey in the early days.
A number of his albums are famous. He has a literary influence, too, upon American literature. Some of his key lyrical works are The Thunder Road, The River, Born to Run, and so on.
Bio of Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (b.1949)
His father worked as a bus driver, and was of Irish and Dutch ancestry and his mother worked as a legal secretary, and was of Italian descent. Bruce was raised as a Catholic. He was inspired at the age of 7 to take up music when he saw Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) . He bought his first guitar for 18 dollars at age 13.
In 1965, he became the lead guitarist in the band "The Castiles", and later the lead singer in the band. From 1969 to 1971 he performed with Steven Van Zandt, Danny Federici and Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez in a band called "Child", that was renamed later to "Steel Mill" when guitarist Robbin Thompson joined the band.
In 1972, he signed a record deal with Columbia Records and released his debut album, "Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.", with his New Jersey-based colleagues, who would later be called "The E Street Band”. In January, 1973. The album had critical success and so did their second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, released in September, 1973, but it had little commercial success. In 1975, after more than 14 month of recording, their third album was released, Born to Run, which brought both critical and commercial success for Springsteen and the band.
In 1977 he produced the album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, released in 1978 which became a turning point musically for his career. In 1980 came the release of The River; the album sold well and he followed up with the album Nebraska which had critical success but little commercial success. Springsteen came back with a bang with the release of the album Born in the U.S.A. in 1984, which sold 15 million copies in the U.S. alone and had seven top ten singles. It became one of the best-selling albums of all time.
Born down in a dead man’s town
The first hit I took was when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just to cover it up now
Born in the U.S.A.
Singing Born in the U.S.A.
After the huge success of the Born in the U.S.A. album he released a more calm and sedate album in 1987, Tunnel of Love, which included songs about love lost and the challenges of love, after the break-up with first wife, Julianne Phillips. It is a metaphor for the journey a man takes when following the path of marriage with his new bride.
Fat man sitting on a little stool
Takes the money from my hand while his eyes take a walk all over you
Hands me two tickets, smiles and whispers good luck
Well, cuddle up, angel, cuddle up, my little dove
And we'll ride down, baby, into this tunnel of love
The albums Lucky Town and Human Touch released in 1992 were also popular. Human Touch hit the number one spot of the best-selling albums in the UK. In 1994 he won an academy award for the song Streets of Philadelphia featured in the film Philadelphia (1993).
I was bruised and battered
I couldn't tell what I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself
Saw my reflection in a window
And didn't know my own face
Oh brother are you gonna leave me wastin' away
On the streets of Philadelphia?
In 1995, he released the album The Ghost of Tom Joad, which was mostly a solo guitar album and was inspired by a book. After being apart from the E Street Band for several years they reunited with a successful tour which ended in Madison Square Garden in New York in the year 2000. In 2002 he released the first studio album with the full band in over 18 years, The Rising, and it became a critical and commercial success. In 2005 he released his third folk album called Devils & Dust (after Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad). It was followed by We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions in 2006 and Magic in 2007. His 16th album released on January 27, 2009 is called Working on a Dream.
He married for the first time at the age of 35 to actress Julianne Phillips. The marriage helped boost her acting career, but his traveling took a toll on the marriage and the final blow came when she found out his affair with the American singer/songwriter/guitarist Patti Scialfa. Their marriage ended in 1989. He then married Patti Scialfa on June 8th, 1991. They have three children together: Evan James Springsteen (born July 25, 1990), Jessica Rae (born December 30, 1991) and Sam Ryan Springsteen (born January 5, 1994).
(Based on an IMDB bio https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0819803/bio/)
KumKum
KumKum read a poem by Louise Glück, a poet who was read at KRG before. Her name is pronounced ‘Glick.’ It's a tiny poem. Yet this poem is interesting. I learned about it from an article by A. O. Scott, journalist from New York Times, which was published on December 11, 2025. It was titled ‘I Think This Poem Is Kind of Into You.’ The article showed his appreciation for the poem by Glück, a Nobel prize winner in 2022 for “her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual experience universal.”
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Louise Glück, The Nobel Prize in Literature 2020. Born - 1943, New York, NY, USA
Had KumKum not read the article and the poem together, she would not have liked the poem as much. Louise Glück is known for her austere writing style, but A. O. Scott was fulsome in his appreciation of this really austere poem.
Glück was born on April 22, 1943 and died on October 13, 2023. Besides the Nobel, Glück won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bollinger Prize, and National Book Awards among many others. She was Poet Laureate of the United States during 2003-4. She attended Columbia University, but didn't complete her studies. In addition to being a poet, she taught literature in various universities, including Yale and Stanford. The Triumph of Achilles and Wild Iris are her two notable works, This little bit must suffice for her biography. More may be found at Joe's blog post in 2020.
Early December in Croton on Hudson is a description of a very cold day in Croton, a little town in Westchester County, about an hour north of New York City by the suburban train. Hudson is the river which flows on the Western side of Manhattan.
The first seven lines of the poem are a description of a very cold day in this town. Then, all comes to a “Standstill". The poet remembers an accident that took place a year ago on a similar cold day. She mentions the accident. There were two of them. The last line is almost out of the blue: I want you. The reader tries to guess what happened to the ‘You.’ No sadness, but a sort of a demand ends the poem.
The reader wants to guess what happened. Could the poet not have left a note to the poem to resolve the mystery? Did she lose her husband, one wonders? It could have been anyone – a son, a friend, a dear one who was with her on that day when they were going out to deliver Christmas presents. It was a cold day. The pine trees were standing bare and there was a storm and then, I want you. Suddenly she is feeling an absence. The poem is almost like a haiku with the last line as the kireji.
If you read it the first time, it doesn't make any sense. Her poems are really short and very difficult to fathom, and those commas and full stops are intentional.
Joe read some poems of hers when she received the Nobel prize in 2000, and even bought a book of her poems. Joe remembers that he immersed himself in that poetry to the point where one night he had a dream about a poetic conversation with her.
This is how the conversation went. They're all in quatrains.
LG:
The name’s Louise,
Surname is Glück,
Pronounced with ease,
It rhymes with click.
Joe:
Why the umlaut,
The ü that way –
You’re not a Kraut,
More east, I’d say.
LG:
The dots in the name
Give it a flourish,
Add lustre to fame
And perhaps a burnish …
Good one, Joe, said somebody. It should go into your blog.
Pamela.
Pamela chose two poems by the poet Mary Oliver.
Very briefly about Mary Oliver. She was born on 10 September 1935, and died on 17 January 2019. She's an American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and the National Book Award in 1992. She found inspiration for her work in nature, and made a lifelong practice of solitary walks in the wild. Her poetry is characterised by poetic contemplation of the wonders of the natural environment. Her imagery is vivid and her language unadorned. In 2007, she was declared the best-selling poet in the United States.
The first poem is I Don't Want to be Demure or Respectable. It’s short, but beautifully done.
What to make of the last two lines? –
I’m not trying to be wise, that would be foolish.
I’m just chattering.
– she drops all posturing and comes across as wanting to draw the reader in by her matter-of-fact charm. The poem is a rejection of societal constraints. It urges a transition from a conventional life to one filled with wild, creative energy and awareness of nature. It celebrates the beauty of the ordinary, and an active, joyful engagement with the world rather than passive observation. She talks about traveling and seeing places.
The second poem is called Loneliness The poet says it's wonderful to find comfort in nature when you are lonely. Nothing like the nature.
Oh, mother earth,
your comfort is great, your arms never withhold.
KumKum nodded yes and said if you just walk down the beach of Fort Kochi, you feel so good watching the sunset, the sea, and sometimes even get to see the playful porpoises weaving through the water! Nature becomes like a companion for you.
Mary Oliver, shown here in 2013, in addition to her Pulitzer Prize, received the National Book Award for Poetry in 1992
Therefore, in loneliness, we can seek a oneness with nature, and return to it always as to a mother. Mary Oliver in a lot of her poems was known for being inspired by nature, .
A strain of introversion may be seen in the poet. She used to go for long walks, composing poems in her head. Many a reader could identify with her.
KumKum noted a very pretty girl in a pretty dress is joining us on Zoom – Shoba. Her new hairstyle suited her so well. And she was wearing kajal and lipstick. Shoba replied she was working in the garden the whole day and looked terrible by the time the reading came around. She took a photo of herself as she was and realised, no, no, this will never do. She had to do something to present herself to KRG.
Priya
Readers may have wondered why Priya chose Rabindranath Tagore. The Poet has been with her in spirit for a long time. But she chose him because she got this lovely gift as a prize for the December fancy dress competition – it is called the Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, edited by Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris. It features over 200 poets. The first poem in this collection is by Rabindranath Tagore. There are poems by poets from all over the world. What Priya chose is another poem by Rabindranath called Clouds and Waves.
Rabindranath Tagore - Photograph courtesy Rabindra Bhavan, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, from The Essential Tagore by Harvard Universtiy Press
A recap about Rabindranath Tagore who figured prominently in the KRG Blog when the poet’s 150th Birth Anniversary was celebrated on May 7, 2011. We had several blog posts beginning with a tribute paid by Jawaharlal Nehru on June 17, 1961 for his centenary, taken from Rabindranath Tagore: A Centenary Volume 1861-1961, published by the Sahitya Akademi. Twelve more KRG blog posts are recorded in April to July 2011, ending with Padmanabha Dasgupta’s personal appreciation of the style and content of Rabindranath's short stories. He was Joe’s beloved friend and one of the brightest minds in the Physics Department at Calcutta University in those days.
Priya continued her introduction. Rabindranath Tagore, 1861 to 1941, was a Bengali poet, novelist, composer, painter and philosopher who reshaped Bengali literature and music and became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913, for his poetic composition Gitanjali, Song Offerings (1912). It was published with significant effort and support from W.B. Yeats, although Tagore himself translated the poems.
Known as Gurudev, he founded Vishwabharti University in Santiniketan, about 170 km from Kolkata by rail. Tagore championed humanism and wrote the national anthems of India (Jana, Gana, Mana) and Bangladesh (Amar Sonar Bangla).
He was born on May 7, 1861 to a prominent family and became a key figure of the Bengal Renaissance. He wrote poetry, short stories, novels and essays. He also painted. Perhaps he’s best known in Bengal for the 2,000+ songs, he composed known as Rabindra Sangeet.
When it comes to the poetry collections, besides Gitanjali, there is The Crescent Moon, 1913, The Gardener, 1913, Fruit-Gathering, 1916, Stray Birds in 1916, and essay collections such as, Sadhana, The Realisation of Life, and Personality.
The poems Priya selected are from the anthology, The Crescent Moon.
He was the son of a religious reformer, Debendranath Tagore. He began writing poetry very early, at the age of eight. He went to England to complete his studies there but left off. He published several books of poetry in the 1880s and completed Manus, 1890, a collection that marks the maturing of his genius. It contains some of his best-known poems.
In 1891, Tagore was sent to East Bengal to manage his family’s estates. He was there for 10 years, staying in the family houseboat on the Padma River. His most famous poem called Sonar Tari, The Golden Boat, is from that sojourn in East Bengal, now Bangladesh.
That is where he came in contact with the village folk, and his sympathy for them became the keynote of much of his later writing. Most of his finest short stories, which examine humble lives and their little miseries, date from the 1890s, and have a poignancy laced with gentle irony.
In 1901, Tagore founded an experimental school in rural West Bengal at Santiniketan, where he sought to blend the best of the Indian and Western traditions. He settled permanently at the school, which became Vishvabharti University in 1921.
Tagore spent long periods out of India lecturing and reading from his work in Europe, Americas, and East Asia, and became an eloquent spokesperson for the cause of Indian independence. Tagore's novels in Bengali are less well-known than his poems and short stories.
But his most famous works are Gora in 1910, and Ghore Baire in 1916, translated into English. In the late 1920s, when he was in his 60s, Tagore took up painting and produced works that won him a place among India's foremost modern artists.
We can't imagine what a gifted and multi-faceted artist Tagore was, and a towering personality. Indians are proud of Rabindranath.
The two poems chosen by Priya from a collection called Crescent Moon are simple, but there is something very extraordinary about the way it is layered – there's such a depth. On the surface, Clouds and Waves is also a very simple poem.
It's such a lovely poem. Imagine a little child saying the poem.
We play from the time we wake till the day ends.
We play with the golden dawn, we play with the silver moon.”
I ask, “But how am I to get up to you ?”
It's beautiful, no?
Come to the edge of the earth, lift up your
hands to the sky, and you will be taken up into the clouds.
…
I shall roll on and on and on, and break upon your lap with
laughter.
And no one in the world will know where we both are.
The child is conversing with his mother. The whole thing about the shore, and the waves coming, it's also about going into the other life.
Who is the translator of this poem, Joe asked? Priya did not know.
The poem Defamation is also connected with a child who is always being pulled up for having some dirt or stains or torn clothes
You have stained your fingers and face with ink while writing-
is that why they call you dirty?
O, fie! Would they dare to call the full moon dirty because
it has smudged its face with ink?
It is a tender poem championing innocence against harsh, petty adult judgment. The speaker comforts a child scolded for trivial, messy, or natural actions (stained fingers, torn clothes) by comparing them to beautiful, natural, or sublime things like the moon or autumn. It highlights the necessity of unconditional love over strict, judgmental, or conformist scrutiny that many children encounter in their homes.. Philosophically, the poem suggests that true wisdom lies in embracing imperfections and finding beauty, and innocence in everyday, common, natural, and seemingly flawed, acts.
Saras
Robert W Service (1874-1958)
Robert William Service was an English-born Canadian poet and writer, often called “The Bard of the Yukon" and "The Canadian Kipling".
Born in Lancashire, England to a bank cashier and an heiress, poet Robert William Service moved to Scotland at the age of five, living with his grandfather and three aunts until his parents moved to Glasgow four years later and the family reunited. He wrote his first poem on his sixth birthday, and was educated at some of the best schools in Scotland, where his interest in poetry grew alongside a desire for travel and adventure. Inspired by Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson, Service sailed to western Canada in 1894 to become a cowboy in the Yukon Wilderness. He worked on a ranch and as a bank teller in Vancouver Island six years after the Gold Rush, gleaning material that would inform his poetry for years to come and earn him his reputation as “Bard of the Yukon.” Service travelled widely throughout his life—to Hollywood, Cuba, Alberta, Paris, Louisiana, and elsewhere—and his travels continued to fuel his writing.
Robert W. Service
A prolific writer and poet, Service published numerous collections of poetry during his lifetime, including Songs of a Sourdough or Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses (1907), which went into ten printings in its first year; Ballad of a Cheechako (1909) and Ballads of a Bohemian (1921), as well as two autobiographies and six novels. Several of his novels were made into films, and he also appeared as an actor in The Spoilers, a 1942 film with Marlene Dietrich.
A casual use of what would today be considered ethnic slurs, complicates contemporary readings of his work. However, his epic, rhymed, often humorous poems about the West’s wilderness, Yukon gold miners, and World War I show the narrative mastery, appetite for adventure, and eye for detail that enabled him to bridge the spheres of popular and literary audiences.
Service's poetry is characterised by its strong narratives and accessible language. He employed traditional rhyme schemes and rhythms, making his poems easy to read and memorise. This accessibility contributed to his immense popularity, with his works finding a wide audience among both everyday readers and literary critics. Service's unique contribution lies in his focus on the Yukon and the particular spirit of the Gold Rush, making him a chronicler of a specific time and place. His vivid depictions of the Yukon landscape and the raw human experience of the Gold Rush provide a timeless glimpse into a bygone era.
He was a correspondent for the Toronto Star during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, and served in World War I as an ambulance driver in France. After the war, Service married Germaine Bougeoin and they resided mainly in the south of France until his death.
Service’s two-room cabin in the Yukon, which he lived in from November 1909 until June 1912 while writing his Gold Rush novel The Trail of Ninety-Eight (1911) and his poetry collection Rhymes of a Rolling Stone (1913), is maintained as a historic site for visitors.
The two poems Saras selected are a departure from Service’s usual style.
1. Little Brother
This was written just before the world became concerned about World War I. He's telling the younger generation, this war is something that you need. You have to go to war. It's something that you cannot avoid. So, this is a pro-war poem.
In 2026 Feb we are in the same era, with war mongering everywhere. It rang a bell in Saras’ mind.(Little did Saras know that a week later Mr Trump at the behest of PM Netanyahu of Israel would start an entirely unprovoked bombing campaign of Iran). They are calling it the ‘Iran War’ but it is in reality the US-Israel War on Iran.
Unlike the humorous, frontier-themed narratives for which the author is best known, this poem adopts a somber, apocalyptic register, signalling a departure from his usual persona. Service has moved away from his usual feelings. It tells how worried, or concerned Service was about the war that was to come, that everybody knew was coming. It reveals a lesser-known preoccupation with global catastrophe rather than individual adventure. The poem reflects anxieties surrounding early 20th-century geopolitical tensions, anticipating industrialised global conflict before World War I fully unfolded. It aligns with pre-war fears circulating in popular discourse – which is distinct from contemporary modernist skepticism. While many poets of the era turned inward or questioned national narratives, this work maintains a direct, didactic tone common in Edwardian verse. Rather than framing the poem solely as a war prophecy, the repeated invocation of “Little Brother” suggests a generational lament—the speaker not only warns but mourns the innocence of youth entering an irreversibly violent age. This intimate address undercuts the grandiosity of war rhetoric, focusing on familial vulnerability.
2. My Indian Summer – My Indian Summer was published in Service's 1929 book, Rhymes of a Rolling Stone. Service's use of vivid imagery, metaphors, allusions, and personification enhances the poem's meaning and beauty, creating a powerful and resonant work of art. The poem’s imagery evokes the sights, sounds, and sensations of a city in autumn. The first stanza, for example, paints a picture of "leaves eddying in the wind," "crimson, gold, and brown," and "children chasing and laughing."
As we reflect on the poem's message and themes, we are reminded of the importance of connecting with nature, of finding meaning and purpose in our lives, and of cherishing the fleeting beauty of our existence.
Saras particularly loved this poem as it spoke to her about contentment in life. It's about a man who has reached the sad end of his life and he's looking back and he's very happy with where he is right now.
Shoba
Shoba read a powerful excerpt from Tennyson’s long poem Le Morte d’Arthur, containing the opening of the poem and Arthur's final speech from the barge. Le Morte d'Arthur is originally a 15th-century Middle English prose compilation in which Sir Thomas Malory reworked tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table, along with their respective folklore. It includes the quest for the Holy Grail and the legend of Tristan and Iseult.
The Morte D’Arthur, is the most well known part of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, which draws on Sir Thomas Malory’s medieval work of the same name (Le Morte D’Arthur) as well as the Celtic Mabinogion, a collection of eleven medieval Welsh prose tales compiled from oral traditions in the 12th–13th centuries. Published between 1859 and 1885, Idylls of the King is a cycle of twelve narrative poems by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892). It retells the legend of King Arthur, his knights, his love for Guinevere and her tragic betrayal of him, and the rise and fall of Arthur's kingdom. Tennyson was Poet Laureate from 1850 until his death.
The narrative in this excerpt moves from the earthly, physical realm of the battlefield to the mystical, spiritual realm of the mere (lake) and the barge. The narrative focus is not on the fighting, but on the desolation and isolation that follows.
King Arthur’s table, man by man,
Had fallen
The Last Knight: Sir Bedivere is the lone witness, the one who must carry the burden of this moment. Bedivere carries Arthur to a "broken chancel with a broken cross." This is a powerful image. The chapel, a place of worship and peaceful order, is ruined. It symbolises the collapse of the spiritual and social order.
The King's Farewell (Arthur's Speech) is the emotional and philosophical heart of the excerpt. The narrative pauses for Arthur's final words.
The old order changeth, yielding place to new
is the central thesis. Arthur is not raging against death; he is philosophically accepting the cycle of history.
He reflects on his life, hoping his actions will be "made pure" by a higher power. This shifts the narrative focus from his physical reign to his spiritual legacy. Arthur's instruction to Bedivere to "Pray for my soul" elevates the narrative from a simple death scene to a spiritual drama.
He reveals his destination not as death, but as a journey to the "island-valley of Avilion." The narrative here becomes mythic. Avilion is described as a paradise of eternal summer, a place of healing.
The final vision in the last 8 lines returns to Bedivere's perspective. The barge moves away. The focus is on the diminishing sight and sound. Bedivere is left "Revolving many memories," frozen in place. The narrative ends not with Arthur's death, but with the loneliness of the survivor. The final image of the hull as a "black dot against the verge of dawn" and the "wailing" dying away is a wonderful conclusion, leaving the reader in the same state of profound loss and silence as Bedivere.
The poem uses unrhymed iambic pentameter.
So all day long the noise of battle roll’d,
– the opening sets the rhythm as steady and rolling, mimicking the relentless sound of battle.
The Bleak vs. The Beautiful is a stark contrast Tennyson creates between the opening and closing images. The "winter sea," "broken cross," and "barren land" are bleak and cold. This is the world of reality, of loss.
Avilion: In contrast, Arthur's description of Avilion is a burst of rich, sensory imagery:
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea.
The repetition of soft consonants and the imagery of eternal summer create a stark contrast to the barren battlefield, making the mythical destination feel like a genuine refuge.
the barge with oar and sail
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan
This is a classical and beautiful simile. The swan is often associated in poetry with death (the "swan song"). The image of it "ruffling her pure cold plume" just before death perfectly captures the beauty and sadness of Arthur's departure.
Arthur being taken to Avalon in Alberto Sangorski's 1912 illustration for Tennyson's poem "Morte d'Arthur”
Tennyson was a master of the sounds of alliteration to bind images and create mood. Notice the harsh 'b' sounds in "barren land" and the mournful 'w' sounds in "wailing died away." Assonance is another sound device he uses, e.g.
So all day long the noise of battle roll’d,
The the long 'o' sounds create a sense of hollow, echoing sound.
The tone of the poem is solemn and elegiac, one of dignified sorrow. Even in Arthur's speech, there is a profound sadness, but it is tempered by wisdom and faith.
The final departure is awe-inspiring and mystical. The simile of the swan and the description of the barge moving into the dawn together create a sense of a sacred, otherworldly event taking place, leaving the mortal observer (and the reader) in a state of hushed wonder.
(The above appreciation is modified from DeepSeek, an AI program of wide application)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as painted by Millais, English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
A bio of Tennyson from an earlier blog post is linked here. A link to the palatial manor on the Isle of Wight shows where Tennyson lived and entertained visitors.
Farringford House on the Isle of Wight where Tennyson fled to escape crowds of his fans
Thomo
Thomo chose an abridgement of The First Elegy by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. The original is rather long.
The Duino Elegies (German: Duineser Elegien) are a collection of ten elegies written by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He began the elegies in 1912 while a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis at Duino Castle in Italy on the Adriatic Sea. The poems were dedicated to the Princess upon their publication in 1923. It remained incomplete for 10 years on account of WWI, the poet being conscripted into military service. He did not return to the work until a few years after the war ended. With a sudden, renewed burst of frantic writing he completed the collection in February 1922 while staying at Château de Muzot in Veyras, Switzerland. After their publication in 1923, the Duino Elegies were soon recognised as his most important work.
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Rilke_Duineser_Elegien_Titel (first edition 1923)
The Duino Elegies are intensely religious, mystical poems that employ the symbolism of angels and salvation, but in a manner atypical of Christian interpretations. Rilke begins the first elegy with an invocation of philosophical despair, asking:
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders?
(Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?)
The elegies have melancholy and lamentation throughout, but many passages are marked by their positive energy.
Duino Castle, near Trieste, Italy – Rilke began writing the first and second elegies after hearing a voice in the wind while walking along the cliffs
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Rilke and Baladine Klossowska at the Château de Muzot (circa 1922). The two pursued an intense but episodic romance from 1919 until Rilke's death in 1926
Thomo read the opening of Rilke's magnum opus, the Duino Elegies. It’s a profound meditation on human limitation, longing, and the relationship between the mundane and the transcendent. The First Elegy is a vast, spiritual inquiry.
This isn't just a cry of loneliness; it's an immediate confrontation with the idea of a higher, terrifying reality. The poem's power lies in this tension between the desperate loneliness and the desire for an understanding.
There is cosmic despair:
the wind full of worldspace
gnaws at our faces
And also gentle observation:
some tree on a slope, to which our eyes returned
day after day;
This elegy is woven with recurring motifs and ideas that set the stage for the entire cycle of ten poems.
1. The Terrifying Angels: The Angel in Rilke's work is not a cherubic figure but a terrifying embodiment of a higher, more complete consciousness.
2. Human Limitations: The poem contrasts human frailty with the Angel's perfection. We are not
at home we are
in the interpreted world.
3. The Call to Sing and Praise: Despite this bleak assessment, the poem contains a powerful imperative. Rilke commands himself and us:
Begin ever anew their impossible praise.
The task is to sing of those who loved deeply and were abandoned.
4. The Realm of the Dead: A significant portion of the elegy turns to the dead, particularly the "youthful dead." They are not gone but exist in a state of transition, needing the living to
gently dispel
the air of injustice
that might cling to their memory.
5. The Hero Versus the Lover: Rilke draws a distinction between the hero, whose life is a clear, public narrative culminating in a meaningful death .
The elegy is not a random collection of thoughts but a spiralling argument. It moves from the impossibility of direct contact with the divine (the Angel), through a survey of inadequate human comforts, to a realisation of our essential task: to transform our fleeting, sorrowful experiences into something enduring through praise and lament. It ends with a recollection:
Is it a tale told in vain, that myth of lament for Linos,
in which a daring first music pierced the shell of numbness:
Lament for Linos is one of the oldest and most popular ritual dirges in ancient Greek tradition, sung to mourn the untimely death of the mythical youth Linos. Often accompanied by a lyre and dancing, it represented the grief of nature for the premature destruction of life.
(The above appreciation is modified from DeepSeek, an AI program of wide application)
Bio of Rilke (1875–1926)
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) is widely recognised as one of the most lyrically intense and spiritually profound poets in the German language. A master of bridging the gap between traditional 19th-century romanticism and modernist existentialism, Rilke’s work explores themes of deep solitude, the complexities of human connection, and the transcendent power of art.
Early Life and Difficult Beginnings
Born René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke on December 4, 1875, in Prague (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), his early years were marked by instability. His parents’ marriage was deeply unhappy and ultimately ended in separation. Still grieving the loss of an infant daughter, his mother reportedly dressed young René in girls' clothing until he was five, treating him as a surrogate for her deceased child.
At his father's insistence, a sensitive and artistically inclined Rilke was sent to a military academy at age eleven. He found the environment brutal and traumatising, eventually leaving due to poor health. He later completed his education back in Prague, where he began writing early poetry and studying literature, art history, and philosophy.
Transformative Encounters: Lou Andreas-Salomé and Auguste Rodin
In 1897, Rilke met Lou Andreas-Salomé, a brilliant Russian intellectual and psychoanalyst who had previously been the confidante of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. She became his lover, mentor, and lifelong muse.
Lou Andreas-Salomé, ca. 1897
It was Salomé who encouraged him to change his first name from the French "René" to the more robust, Germanic "Rainer." Together, they travelled to Russia, a trip that profoundly shaped Rilke’s spiritual outlook and inspired his early masterpiece, The Book of Hours (Das Stunden-Buch).
Rilke and his wife Clara Westhoff
In 1900, Rilke married Clara Westhoff, a talented sculptor. Though they had a daughter, Ruth, traditional domestic life did not suit Rilke’s restless, solitary nature, and the couple soon lived largely apart. Rilke moved to Paris in 1902 to write a monograph on the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Serving briefly as Rodin’s secretary, Rilke learned the value of rigorous observation and disciplined craftsmanship. Rodin taught him to look outward, moving away from his early, highly subjective outpourings. This led to the creation of Rilke’s New Poems (Neue Gedichte), containing his famous "thing-poems" (Dinggedichte), such as The Panther, which sought to capture the inner essence of an animal or object through precise, objective description.
The Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus
Rilke’s most famous works were born out of both sudden inspiration and agonising writer's block. In 1912, while staying at Duino Castle on the Adriatic coast as a guest of his patron, Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, Rilke heard what he believed was a voice in the wind calling out the first line of the Duino Elegies. He drafted the first few elegies quickly, but the outbreak of World War I, along with deep bouts of depression, and a paralysing creative block halted his progress.
It was not until ten years later, in February 1922, that Rilke experienced one of the most astonishing creative bursts in literary history. Living in the Château de Muzot, a medieval tower in Switzerland, he completed the remaining Duino Elegies in a matter of days. Immediately thereafter, in an unplanned frenzy of inspiration, he wrote the entirely separate cycle of 55 poems, The Sonnets to Orpheus.
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First edition book cover of Sonette an Orpheus (Sonnets to Orpheus) (1923) by Rainer Maria Rilke
These two works represent the summit of his career, articulating a complex cosmology of terrifying angels, life and death as a single continuum, and the transformative power of human consciousness.
Final Years and Legacy
Following his triumphs in 1922, Rilke’s health began to decline. He suffered from mysterious ailments that were eventually diagnosed as a rare form of leukaemia. He spent his final years in and out of Swiss sanatoriums, enduring immense pain but continuing to write, notably producing a significant body of poetry in French.
Rilke died on December 29, 1926, at the Valmont Sanatorium in Montreux, Switzerland. He was buried in a churchyard in Raron, beneath an epitaph he himself penned:
Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy
of being no one's sleep under so many
lids.
{Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,
Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel
Lidern.)
Today, Rilke remains an enduringly popular figure, his work continuing to offer solace and profound insight to readers navigating the complexities of modern existence.
(The above appreciation is modified from Gemini 3, an AI program of wide application)
The Poems
Arundhaty
Franz Marc’s Blue Horses by Mary Oliver
I step into the painting of the four blue horses.
I am not even surprised that I can do this.
One of the horses walks toward me.
His blue nose noses me lightly. I put my arm
over his blue mane, not holding on, just
commingling.
He allows me my pleasure.
Franz Marc died a young man, shrapnel in his brain.
I would rather die than try to explain to the blue horses
what war is.
They would either faint in horror, or simply
find it impossible to believe.
I do not know how to thank you, Franz Marc.
Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually.
Maybe the desire to make something beautiful
is the piece of God that is inside each of us.
Now all four horses have come closer,
are bending their faces toward me
as if they have secrets to tell.
I don't expect them to speak, and they don't.
If being so beautiful isn't enough, what
could they possible say?
Devika
Because that you are going by Emily Dickinson
1260
Because that you are going
And never coming back
And I, however absolute,
May overlook your Track—
Because that Death is final,
However first it be,
This instant be suspended
Above Mortality—
Significance that each has lived
The other to detect
Discovery not God himself
Could now annihilate
Eternity, Presumption
The instant I perceive
That you, who were Existence
Yourself forgot to live—
The “Life that is” will then have been
A thing I never knew—
As Paradise fictitious
Until the Realm of you—
The “Life that is to be,” to me,
A Residence too plain
Unless in my Redeemer’s Face
I recognize your own—
Of Immortality who doubts
He may exchange with me
Curtailed by your obscuring Face
Of everything but He—
Of Heaven and Hell I also yield
The Right to reprehend
To whoso would commute this Face
For his less priceless Friend.
If “God is Love” as he admits
We think that me must be
Because he is a “jealous God”
He tells us certainly
If “All is possible with” him
As he besides concedes
He will refund us finally
Our confiscated Gods—
Geetha
Dis Poetry by Benjamin Zephaniah
Dis poetry is like a riddim dat drops
De tongue fires a riddim dat shoots like shots
Dis poetry is designed fe rantin
Dance hall style, big mouth chanting,
Dis poetry nar put yu to sleep
Preaching follow me
Like yu is blind sheep,
Dis poetry is not Party Political
Not designed fe dose who are critical.
Dis poetry is wid me when I gu to me bed
It gets into me dreadlocks
It lingers around me head
Dis poetry goes wid me as I pedal me bike
I’ve tried Shakespeare, respect due dere
But did is de stuff I like.
Dis poetry is not afraid of going ina book
Still dis poetry need ears fe hear an eyes fe hav a look
Dis poetry is Verbal Riddim, no big words involved
An if I hav a problem de riddim gets it solved,
I‘ve tried to be more romantic, it does nu good for me
So I tek a Reggae Riddim an build me poetry,
I could try be more personal
But you‘ve heard it all before,
Pages of written words not needed
Brain has many words in store,
Yu could call dis poetry Dub Ranting
De tongue plays a beat
De body starts skanking,
Dis poetry is quick an childish
Dis poetry is fe de wise an foolish,
Anybody can do it fe free,
Dis poetry is fe yu an me,
Don’t stretch yu imagination
Dis poetry is fe de good of de Nation,
Chant,
In de morning
I chant
In de night
I chant
In de darkness
An under de spotlight,
I pass thru University
I pass thru Sociology
An den I got a dread degree
In Dreadfull Ghettology.
Dis poetry stays wid me when I run or walk
An when I am talking to meself in poetry I talk,
Dis poetry is wid me,
Below me an above,
Dis poetry's from inside me
It goes to yu
WID LUV.
(Performance Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHi6wIDaT1Y)
Joe
Streets of Minneapolis Lyrics by Bruce Springsteen
[Verse 1]
Through the winter's ice and cold
Down Nicollet Avenue
A city aflame fought fire and ice
'Neath an occupier's boots
King Trump's private army from the DHS
Guns belted to their coats
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law
Or so their story goes
[Verse 2]
Against smoke and rubber bullets
In the dawn's early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringing through the night
And there were bloody footprints
Where mercy should have stood
And two dead, left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pretti and Renee Good
[Chorus]
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We'll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our home, they killed and roamed
In the winter of '26
We'll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
[Verse 3]
Trump's federal thugs beat up on
His face and his chest
Then we heard the gunshots
And Alex Pretti lay in the snow dead
Their claim was self-defense, sir
Just don't believe your eyes
It's our blood and bones
And these whistles and phones
Against Miller and Noem's dirty lies
[Chorus]
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Crying through the bloody mist
We'll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
[Bridge]
Now they say they're here to uphold the law
But they trample on our rights
If your skin is black or brown, my friend
You can be questioned or deported on sight
In our chants of “ICE out now”
Our city's heart and soul persists
Through broken glass and bloody tears
On the streets of Minneapolis
[Chorus]
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
Here in our home, they killed and roamed
In the winter of '26
We'll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
We'll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
We'll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
(Official Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDaPdpwA4Iw)
KumKum
Early December in Croton-on-Hudson by Louise Glück
Spiked sun. The Hudson’s
Whittled down by ice.
I hear the bone dice
Of blown gravel clicking. Bone-
pale, the recent snow
Fastens like fur to the river.
Standstill. We were leaving to deliver
Christmas presents when the tire blew
Last year. Above the dead valves pines pared
Down by a storm stood, limbs bared . . .
I want you.
Pamela
Two poems by Mary Oliver
1. I don’t want to be demure or respectable
“I don’t want to be demure or respectable.
I was that way, asleep, for years.
That way, you forget too many important things.
How the little stones, even if you can’t hear them,
are singing.
How the river can’t wait to get to the ocean and
the sky, it’s been there before.
What traveling is that!
It is a joy to imagine such distances.
I could skip sleep for the next hundred years.
There is a fire in the lashes of my eyes.
It doesn’t matter where I am, it could be a small room.
The glimmer of gold Böhme saw on the kitchen pot
was missed by everyone else in the house.
Maybe the fire in my lashes is a reflection of that.
Who do I have so many thoughts, they are driving me
crazy.
Why am I always going anywhere, instead of
somewhere?
Listen to me or not, it hardly matters.
I’m not trying to be wise, that would be foolish.
I’m just chattering.”
2. Loneliness
I too have known loneliness.
I too have known what it is to feel
misunderstood,
rejected, and suddenly
not at all beautiful.
Oh, mother earth,
your comfort is great, your arms never withhold.
It has saved my life to know this.
Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning.
Oh, motions of tenderness!
Priya
Two poems by Rabindranath Tagore
1. Clouds and Waves
Mother, the folk who live up in the clouds call out to me-
“We play from the time we wake till the day ends.
We play with the golden dawn, we play with the silver moon.”
I ask, “But how am I to get up to you ?”
They answer, “Come to the edge of the earth, lift up your
hands to the sky, and you will be taken up into the clouds.”
“My mother is waiting for me at home, “I say, “How can I leave
her and come?”
Then they smile and float away.
But I know a nicer game than that, mother.
I shall be the cloud and you the moon.
I shall cover you with both my hands, and our house-top will
be the blue sky.
The folk who live in the waves call out to me-
“We sing from morning till night; on and on we travel and know
not where we pass.”
I ask, “But how am I to join you?”
They tell me, “Come to the edge of the shore and stand with
your eyes tight shut, and you will be carried out upon the waves.”
I say, “My mother always wants me at home in the everything-
how can I leave her and go?”
They smile, dance and pass by.
But I know a better game than that.
I will be the waves and you will be a strange shore.
I shall roll on and on and on, and break upon your lap with
laughter.
And no one in the world will know where we both are.
2. Defamation
Whey are those tears in your eyes, my child?
How horrid of them to be always scolding you for nothing!
You have stained your fingers and face with ink while writing-
is that why they call you dirty?
O, fie! Would they dare to call the full moon dirty because
it has smudged its face with ink?
For every little trifle they blame you, my child. They are
ready to find fault for nothing.
You tore your clothes while playing-is that why they call you
untidy?
O, fie! What would they call an autumn morning that smiles
through its ragged clouds?
Take no heed of what they say to you, my child.
They make a long list of your misdeeds.
Everybody knows how you love sweet things-is that why they
call you greedy?
O, fie! What then would they call us who love you?
Saras
Two poems by Robert William Service
1. Little Brother
Wars have been and wars will be
Till the human race is run;
Battles red by land and sea,
Never peace beneath the sun.
I am old and little care;
I'll be cold, my lips be dumb:
Brother mine, beware, beware . . .
Evil looms the wrath to come.
Eastern skies are dark with strife,
Western lands are stark with fear;
Rumours of world-war are rife,
Armageddon draweth near.
If your carcase you would save,
Hear, oh hear, the dreadful drum!
Fly to forest, cower in cave . . .
Brother, heed the wrath to come!
Brother, you were born too late;
Human life is but a breath.
Men delve deep, where darkly wait
Sinister the seeds of death,
There's no moment to delay;
Sorrowing the stars are blind.
Little Brother, how I pray
You may sanctuary find.
Peoples of the world succumb . . .
Fly, poor fools, the WRATH TO COME!
2. My Indian Summer
Here in the Autumn of my days
My life is mellowed in a haze.
Unpleasant sights are none to clear,
Discordant sounds I hardly hear.
Infirmities like buffers soft
Sustain me tranquilly aloft.
I'm deaf to duffers, blind to bores,
Peace seems to percolate my pores.
I fold my hands, keep quiet mind,
In dogs and children joy I find.
With temper tolerant and mild,
Myself you'd almost think a child.
Yea, I have come on pleasant ways
Here in the Autumn of my days.
Here in the Autumn of my days
I can allow myself to laze,
To rest and give myself to dreams:
Life never was so sweet, it seems.
I haven't lost my sense of smell,
My taste-buds never served so well.
I love to eat - delicious food
Has never seemed one half so good.
In tea and coffee I delight,
I smoke and sip my grog at night.
I have a softer sense of touch,
For comfort I enjoy so much.
My skis are far more blues than greys,
Here in the Autumn of my days.
Here in the Autumn of my days
My heart is full of peace and praise.
Yet though I know that Winter's near,
I'll meet and greet it with a cheer.
With friendly books, with cosy fires,
And few but favourite desires,
I'll live from strife and woe apart,
And make a Heaven in my heart.
For Goodness, I have learned, is best,
And should by Kindness be expressed.
And so December with a smile
I'll wait and welcome, but meanwhile,
Blest interlude! The Gods I praise,
For this, the Autumn of my days.
Shoba
Morte d’Arthur (excerpt) by Alfred Lord Tennyson
So all day long the noise of battle roll’d
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur’s table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord,
King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep,
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,
Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land.
On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.
…
And slowly answer’d Arthur from the barge:
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within Himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seëst—if indeed I go—
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)
To the island-valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard-lawns
And bowery hollows crown’d with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.”
…
So said he, and the barge with oar and sail
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere
Revolving many memories, till the hull
Look’d one black dot against the verge of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away.
Thomo
The First Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke (abridged)
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angels’
Orders? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly to his heart: I’d be consumed
in his more potent being. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we can still barely endure...
Every Angel is terrifying.
And so I grip myself and choke down that call note
of dark sobbing. Ah, whom can we turn to
in our need? Not Angels, not humans...
That leaves us
some tree on a slope, to which our eyes returned
day after day; leaves us yesterday’s street
and the coddled loyalty of an old habit...
O and the night, the night, when the wind full of worldspace
gnaws at our faces...
It is easier on lovers?
Ah, they only use each other to mask their fates.
You still don’t see? Fling the emptiness in your arms
out into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds
will feel the increase of air with more passionate flight.
Yes, the Springs needed you. Many a star was waiting
for your eyes only...
All that was your charge.
...sing women who loved;
their prodigious feeling still lacks an undying fame.
...Begin ever anew their impossible praise.
...Have you praised Gaspara Stampa
intently enough...
Isn’t it time these most ancient sorrows
at last bore fruit? Time we tenderly detached ourselves
from the loved one, and trembling, stood free:
the way the arrow, suddenly all vector, survives the string
to be more than itself. For abiding is nowhere.
Voices, voices. Listen, my heart, the way
only saints have listened...
...listen to the wind’s breathing,
the unbroken news that takes shape out of silence.
It’s rustling toward you now from all the youthful dead.
...
Granted, it’s strange to dwell on earth no more...
Strange, not to go on wishing one’s wishes. Strange,
to see all that was once so interconnected
drifting in space...
...the living
all make the same mistake: they distinguish too sharply.
Angels (it’s said) often don’t know whether they’re moving among
the living or the dead. The eternal current
sweeps all the ages with it through both kingdoms
forever and drowns their voices in both.
...we, who need
such great mysteries...
Is it a tale told in vain, that myth of lament for Linos,
in which a daring first music pierced the shell of numbness:
stunned Space, which an almost divine youth
had suddenly left forever; then, in that void, vibrations—
which for us now are rapture and solace and help.
(translated by Edward Snow)
The unabridged original is here:
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