March 2025

Ther is No Rose of Swych Virtu Ther is no rose of swych virtu as is the rose that bar Jhesu -- 15th century, anon. An old gardener plants a rosary of garlic around the rosebushes. And the sun on the high windows makes the song softer, softer – a hum in his ears: ther is no rose of swych virtu . . . while the odours from the dug up earth cling to the air – and the wind leaves no boundaries between the scent of roses and the scent of garlic. Sujata Bhatt Reprinted by permission of Carcanet from Collected Poems (2013)

Ther is No Rose of Swych Virtu read by Marjorie Lotfi

Look out for the new set of Poems on the Underground on London Underground and Overground trains through March. The poems share common themes as they celebrate new life and the renewal of nature as spring returns. This month we also celebrate World Poetry Day with new recordings of favourite poems read by poets who have featured on Poems on the Underground. We also mark St Patrick’s Day with a selection of Irish poems

New Poems on The Underground February- March 2025

February Morning The winter light was still to hit the window, and all my other selves were still asleep, when, standing with this child in all our bareness, I found that I was a ruined bridge, or one that stood so long half-built and incomplete; at other times I’d been a swinging gate, a freed skiff – then his head dropped in the groove of my neck, true as a keystone, and I fixed: all stone and good use, two shores with one crossing. The morning broke, I kissed his head, and stood. Niall Campbell Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from Noctuary (2019)

February Morning read by Niall Campbell

from Sidetracks by Bei Dao, translated by Jeffrey Yang

from Sidetracks I am you a stranger on the sidetracks waiting for the season to harvest blades of light sending letters though tomorrow has no address Bei Dao translated by Jeffrey Yang Reprinted by permission of Carcanet from Sidetracks (2024) Text copyright © Zhao Zhenkai 2024 Translation copyright © Jeffrey Yang 2024

One Heart by Li-Young Lee

One Heart Look at the birds. Even flying is born out of nothing. The first sky is inside you, open at either end of day. The work of wings was always freedom, fastening one heart to every falling thing. Li-Young Lee from Book of My Nights. Copyright © 2001 by Li-Young Lee. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of BOA Editions, Ltd. boaeditions.org

Love by George Herbert

Love LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lack’d anything. ‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’ Love said, ‘You shall be he.’ ‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear, I cannot look on Thee.’ Love took my hand and smiling did reply, ‘Who made the eyes but I?’ ‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame Go where it doth deserve.’ ‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’ ‘My dear, then I will serve.’ ‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’ So I did sit and eat. George Herbert

2013, and Daedalus never moved away for work by Lewis Corry,

2013, and Daedalus never moved away for work bike-strung boy sun-licked spark of rubber and steel you soar down the driveway arms spread like wings it is a wonderful thing to fly and there is no greater occasion than being alive Lewis Corry Young Poets on the Underground

Poems on the Underground Celebrating World Poetry Day 2025

We celebrate World Poetry Day with new recordings made for Poems on the Underground by Poets Niyi Osundare, Merle Collins, Niall Campbell, Cyril Wong, Ian Duhig, John Glenday, Helen Ivory, Kerry Shawn Keys, Marjorie Lotfi, Jason Salkey, Connie Bensley, Danielle Hope, Ruth Padel and Brian O’Connor

I Sing of Change Niyi Osundare I sing of the beauty of Athens without its slaves Of a world free of kings and queens and other remnants of an arbitrary past

I Sing of Change read by Niyi Osundare

Free, Merle Collins 'Born free to be caught and fashioned and shaped and freed to wander within a caged dream of tears'

Free read by Merle Collins

1915 I Know the Truth - Give up All Other Truths! , Marina Tsvetayeva (1892-1941) translated by Elaine Feinstein 'I know the truth - give up all other truths! No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle. Look - it is evening, look, it is nearly night: what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals? The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew, the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet. And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we who never let each other sleep above it. '

I Know The Truth by Marina Tsvetayeva read by John Glenday

History and Away, Andrew Salkey 'What we do with time and what time does with us is the way of history, spun down around our feet. So we say today, that we meet our Caribbean shadow just as it follows the sun, away into the curve of tomorrow. In fact our sickle of islands and continental strips are mainlands of time with our own marks on them, yesterday, today and tomorrow.'

History and Away by Andrew Salkey read by Jason Salkey

A song for England, Andrew Salkey. Poems on the Underground poster 1991 'An' a so de rain a-fall An' a so de snow a-rain An' a so de fog a-fall An' a so de sun a-fail An' a so de seasons mix An' a so de bag-o'-tricks But a so me understan' De misery o' de Englishman.

A Song for England by Andrew Salkey read by Jason Salkey

Like A Beacon, Grace Nichols 2009 Poster 'In London every now and then I get this craving for my mother’s food I leave art galleries in search of plantains saltfish/sweet potatoes I need this link I need this touch of home swinging my bag like a beacon against the cold'

Like a Beacon by Grace Nichols read by Merle Collins

Map of the New World: Archipelagoes , Derek Walcott ' At the end of this sentence, rain will begin. At the rain's edge, a sail. Slowly the sail will lose sight of islands; into a mist will go the belief in harbours of an entire race. The ten-years war is finished. Helen's hair, a grey cloud. Troy, a white ashpit by the drizzling sea. The drizzle tightens like the strings of a harp. A man with clouded eyes picks up the rain and plucks the first line of the Odyssey.'

Archipelagoes by Derek Walcott read by Niall Campbell

From March ’79, Tomas Tranströmer, tr. John F. Deane 'Tired of all who come with words, words but no language I went to the snow-covered island'

from March ’79 by Tomas Transtromer read by John Glenday

A Private Life by John Burnside ' I want to drive home in the dusk of some late afternoon, the journey slow, the tractors spilling hay, the land immense and bright, like memory, the pit towns smudges of graphite, their names scratched out for good: Lumphinnans; Kelty. I want to see the darkened rooms, the cups and wireless sets, the crimson lamps across the playing fields, the soft men walking home through streets and parks, and quiet women, coming to their doors, then turning away, their struck lives gathered around them.'

A Private Life by John Burnside read by John Glenday

Love after Love by Derek Walcott ' The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.' Reprinted by permission of Faber from Collected Poems (1986)

Love after Love by Derek Walcott read by Marjorie Lotfi

Come. and be my baby ,Maya Angelou 'The highway is full of big cars going nowhere fast And folks is smoking anything that'll burn Some people wrap their lives around a cocktail glass And you sit wondering where you're going to turn. I got it. Come. And be my baby. Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow But others say we've got a week or two The paper is full of every kind of blooming horror And you sit wondering what you're gonna do. I got it. Come. And be my baby.'

Come. and be my baby by Maya Angelou read by Marjorie Lotfi

Dragonfly by Fleur Adcock In the next life I should like to be for one perpetual day a dragonfly: a series of blue-green flashes over Lily Tarn, a contraption of steel and cellophane whose only verbs are dart, skim, hover. One day is enough to remember. Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from Collected Poems (2024)

Dragonfly by Fleur Adcock read by Cyril Wong

Connie Bensley, Shopper I am spending my way out of a recession. The road chokes on delivery vans. I used to be Just Looking Round, I used to be How Much, and Have You Got It In Beige. Now I devour whole stores— high speed spin; giant size; chunky gold; de luxe springing. Things. I drag them around me into a stockade. It is dark inside; but my credit cards are incandescent.'

Shopper read by Connie Bensley

Stations, Connie Bensley ‘As he travels home on the Northern Line he is reviewing his marriage.’

Stations read by Connie Bensley

The Thunderbolt’s Training Manual, Danielle Hope ‘Choose a soporific afternoon. As sunbathers doze, saturday papers abandoned.’

The Thunderbolt’s Training Manual read by Danielle Hope

Mysteries by Dannie Abse, Poems on the Underground 1994 ‘At night, I do not know who I am when I dream, when I am sleeping. Awakened, I hold my breath and listen: a thumbnail scratches the other side of the wall. At midday, I enter a sunlit room to observe the lamplight on for no reason. I should know by now that few octaves can be heard, that a vision dies from being too long stared at; that the whole of recorded history even is but a little gossip in a great silence; that a magnesium flash cannot illumine, for one single moment, the invisible. I do not complain. I start with the visible and am startled by the visible.'’

Mysteries by Dannie Abse read by Danielle Hope

Misty by Ruth Padel ' How I love The darkwave music Of a sun's eclipse You can't see for cloud The saxophonist playing 'Misty' In the High Street outside Barclays Accompanied by mating-calls Sparked off In a Jaguar alarm The way you're always there Where I'm thinking Or several beats ahead.'

Misty written and read by Ruth Padel

Celebrating St Patrick’s Day

Had I not been awake, Seamus Heaney ' Had I not been awake I would have missed it, A wind that rose and whirled off the roof Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore'

Had I not Been Awake by Seamus Heaney read by Niall Campbell

This Moment, Eavan Boland 'A neighbourhood. At dusk. Things are getting ready to happen out of sight. Stars and moths. And rinds slanting around fruit. But not yet. One tree is black. One window is yellow as butter. A woman leans down to catch a child who has run into her arms this moment. Stars rise. Moths flutter. Apples sweeten in the dark.''

This Moment by Eavan Boland read by John Glenday

Memory of my Father, Patrick Kavanagh 'Every old man I see Reminds me of my father When he had fallen in love with death One time when sheaves were gathered.'

Memory of My Father by Patrick Kavanagh read by Brian O’ Connor

Dog Days, Derek Mahon 'When you stop to consider The days spent dreaming of a future And say then, that was my life.' For the days are long - From the first milk van To the last shout in the night, An eternity. But the weeks go by Like birds; and the years, the years Fly past anti-clockwise Like clock hands in a bar mirror.'

Dog Days by Derek Mahon read by Gerard Benson

The Sunburst by Michael Longley (b.1939) ' Her first memory is of light all around her As she sits among pillows on a patchwork quilt Made out of uniforms, coat linings, petticoats, Waistcoats, flannel shirts, ball gowns, by Mother Or Grandmother, twenty stitches to very inch, A flawless version of World without End or Cathedral Window or a diamond pattern That radiates from the smallest grey square Until the sunburst fades into the calico. 'Michal Longley (b.1939) Reprinted by permission of Random House from The Weather in Japan (Cape 2000) Poems on the Underground

The Sunburst by Michael Longley read by Ian Duhig

The Sonnets, Michael Longley 'The soldier-poet packed into his kitbag His spine-protector, socks, soap, latherbrush (Though he was not then a regular shaver)'

The Sonnets by Michael Longley read by Ian Duhig

The Boundary Commission by Paul Muldoon (b.1951) ' You remember that village where the border ran Down the middle of the street, With the butcher and baker in different states? Today he remarked how a shower of rain Had stopped so cleanly across Golightly's lane, It might have been a wall of glass That had toppled over. He stood there, for ages, To wonder which side, if any, he should be on. '

The Boundary Commission read by Fleur Adcock

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B.Yeats 'I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.'

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W B Yeats read by Kerry Shawn Keys

Poems from February 2025