March 2024

Our first set of Poems on the Underground in 2024 is on London Underground and Overground cars throughout March. As Spring approaches, the common theme is LOVE — of persons and places, welcomed, scorned, remembered, rediscovered. We’re also marking the bicentenary of Lord Byron, the great Romantic poet who died in Missolonghi in 1824. Emily Bronte, another free spirit, is also featured.

This month we also mark St Patrick’s Day with a selection of Irish Poems Celebrating Irish Poetry

and we feature recordings of favourite Poems on the Underground for World Poetry Day

New Poems on the Underground

from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Lord Byron

from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage I have not loved the world, nor the world me; I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed To its idolatries a patient knee, Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud In worship of an echo; in the crowd They could not deem me one of such; I stood Among them, but not of them, in a shroud Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could, Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued. Lord Byron

Riches I hold in light esteem by Emily Bronte

Packing for America by Marjorie Lotfi Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from The Wrong Person to Ask (2023)

Packing for America My Father in Tabriz , 1960 by Marjorie Lotfi He cannot take his mother in the suitcase, the smell of khorest in the air, her spice box too tall to fit. Nor will it close when he folds her sajadah into its cornered edges. He cannot bring the way she rose and blew out the candles at supper’s end, rolled the oilcloth off the carpet to mark the laying out of beds, the beginning of night. He knows the sound of the slap of her sandals across the kitchen tiles will fade. He tosses the framed photographs into the case, though not one shows her eyes; instead, she covers her mouth with her hand as taught, looks away. He considers strapping the samovar to his back like a child’s bag; a lifetime measured by pouring tea from its belly. Finally, he takes the tulip tea glass from her bedside table, winds her chador around its body, leaves the gold rim peeking out like a mouth that might tell him where to go, what is coming next.

The Weight of the World by Seni Seneviratne Reprinted by permission of Peepal Tree Press from Unknown Soldier (2019)

The Weight of the World by Seni Seneviratne Oh, how they blew like vast sails in the breeze, my mother’s wet sheets, pegged hard to the rope of her washing line. There was always hope of dry weather and no need for a please or thanks between us as we hauled them down. Whether to make the fold from right to left or left to right, to tame the restless heft? My job to know. I won’t call it a dance but there were steps to learn and cues to read, the give and take of fabric passed like batons in a relay race. She was my due north. Her right hand set west, mine tracing the east, we closed the distance, calmed the wayward weight, bringing order to the billowing world.

Bridled Vows by Ian Duhig Reprinted by permission of Picador from New and Selected Poems (2021) © Ian Duhig

Bridled Vows by Ian Duhig I will be faithful to you, I do vow, but not until the seas have all run dry et cetera. Although I mean it now I’m not a prophet and I will not lie. To be your perfect wife, I could not swear; I’ll love, yes; honour (maybe); won’t obey, but will co-operate if you will care as much as you are seeming to today. I’ll do my best to be your better half, but I don’t have the patience of a saint and at you, not with you, I’ll sometimes laugh, and snap too, though I’ll try to show restraint. We might work out. No blame if we do not. With all my heart, I think it’s worth a shot.

The Teapot by Robert Bly That morning I heard water being poured into a teapot. The sound was an ordinary, daily, cluffy sound. But all at once, I knew you loved me. An unheard-of-thing, love audible in water falling.

Celebrating Irish Poetry

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B. Yeats

Mise Raifteirí an File I am Raftery the Poet by Antoine Ó Raifteirí

Memory of my Father by Patrick Kavanagh

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.'

Sailing to Byzantium by W.B. Yeats

The Rescue by Seamus Heaney

Not Weeding by Paula Meehan

The Language Issue by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, trans. Paul Muldoon The Language Issue 'Ceist na Teangan Cuirim mo dhóchas ar snámh i mbáidín teangan faoi mar a leagfá naíonán i gcliabhán a bheadh fite fuaite de dhuilleoga feileastraim is bitiúmin agus pic bheith cuimilte lena thóin ansan é a leagadh síos i measc na ngiolcach is coigeal na mban sí le taobh na habhann, féachaint n’fheadaraís cá dtabharfaidh an sruth é, féachaint, dála Mhaoise, an bhfóirfidh iníon Fharoinn? The Language Issue I place my hope on the water in this little boat of the language, the way a body might put an infant in a basket of intertwined iris leaves, its underside proofed with bitumen and pitch, then set the whole thing down amidst the sedge and bulrushes by the edge of a river only to have it borne hither and thither, not knowing where it might end up; in the lap, perhaps, of some Pharaoh’s daughter. '

What is Truth by Louis MacNeice

Legends by Eavan Boland

World Poetry Day

Judith Chernaik, founder of Poems on the Underground, reads her poem ‘Tortoise,’ commissioned to represent the tortoise in ‘Carnival of the Animals’ by the French composer Saint-Saens

Tortoise, Judith Chernaik ' Under the mottled shell of the old tortoise beats the heart of a young dancer. '

George Szirtes, Hungarian-born poet and translator and part of the Poems on the Underground team reads his own poem ‘Accordionist’ and a poem by the Kurdish poet Ilhan Sami Comak, ‘What I know of the sea’. Comak is a Kurdish poet who has been imprisoned in a Turkish prison for 29 years, as a ‘political activist,’ a charge never proven.

Accordionist read by George Szirtes

Accordionist, George Szirtes ' The accordionist is a blind intellectual carrying an enormous typewriter whose keys grow wings as the instrument expands into a tall horizontal hat that collapses with a tubercular wheeze. My century is a sad one of collapses. The concertina of the chest; the tubular bells of the high houses; the flattened ellipses of our skulls that open like petals. We are the poppies sprinkled along the field. We are simple crosses dotted with blood. Beware of the sentiments concealed in this short rhyme. Be wise. Be good.'

What I know of the sea by İlhan Sami Çomak read by George Szirtes

What I know of the sea by İlhan Sami Çomak translated by Caroline Stockford ' Rains wander your face, the gentleness of dew is in your voice. Let each and every spring be yours! May all mountains tire and arrive here! Here at the place where stars have spilled you where waters flow; the place where you say Curl up on my lap and let birds take flight In the place where we collected questions such as ‘what was before words?’ What I know of love is so little! Yet I’m constantly thinking of you!' Reprinted by permission of Smokestack Books from Separated from the Sun (2022)

Imtiaz Dharker reading her poem ‘Carving’, and ‘A Portable Paradise’ by Roger Robinson the distinguished British writer, musician and performance poet with strong ties with Trinidad; his poem was on the tube last year. Imtiaz, a prize-winning poet with ties both with India and Pakistan, has been part of Poems on the Underground for the past 9 years.

Carving read by Imtiaz Dharker

World Poems on the Underground Carving , Imtiaz Dharkar. Others can carve out their space in tombs and pyramids

A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson read by Imtiaz Dharker

And if I speak of Paradise, Roger Robinson ‘And if I speak of Paradise then I’m speaking of my grandmother who told me to carry it always on my person, concealed, so no one else would know but me.’

Paula Meehan, Irish poet and playwright, reads her poem ‘Seed’, perfect for this time of year

Seed by Paula Meehan 'The first warm day of spring and I step out into the garden from the gloom of a house where hope had died to tally the storm damage, to seek what may have survived. And finding some forgotten lupins I’d sown from seed last autumn holding in their fingers a raindrop each like a peace offering, or a promise, I am suddenly grateful and would offer a prayer if I believed in God. But not believing, I bless the power of seed, its casual, useful persistence, and bless the power of sun, its conspiracy with the underground, and thank my stars the winter’s ended.'

Theo Dorgan, Irish writer, reads his poem based on many happy visits to Greece, ‘Bread Dipped in Olive Oil and Salt’

Theo Dorgan, Bread Dipped in Olive Oil and Salt 'Bread dipped in olive oil and salt, a glass of rough dry white. A table beside the evening sea where you sit shelling pistachios,'

Valerie Bloom, (MBE for services to poetry) has published several popular volumes of poems for children and adults. She writes poetry in English and Jamaican patois for all ages, and has performed her work throughout the world, She reads ‘Sun a-shine, rain a-fall’

Sun a Shine by Rain a Fall read by Valerie Bloom

Sun a-shine, rain a-fall, Valerie Bloom 'Sun a-shine, rain a-fall, The Devil an' him wife cyan 'gree at all, The two o'them want one fish-head, The Devil call him wife bonehead, She hiss her teeth, call him cock-eye, Greedy, worthless an 'workshy, While them busy callin' name, The puss walk in, sey is a shame To see a nice fish go to was'e, Lef' with a big grin pon him face.'

John Glenday, Scottish poet, reads his poem ‘For my Wife, Reading in Bed’

For my Wife, Reading in Bed read by John Glenday

For My Wife, Reading in Bed by John Glenday ' I know we’re living through all the dark we can afford. Thank goodness, then, for this moment’s light and you, holding the night at bay—a hint of frown, those focussed hands, that open book. I’ll match your inward quiet, breath for breath. What else do we have but words and their absences to bind and unfasten the knotwork of the heart; to remind us how mutual and alone we are, how tiny and significant? Whatever it is you are reading now my love, read on. Our lives depend on it.' John Glenday Reprinted by permission of Picador from Selected Poems (2020)

Poems from February 2024

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