November 2024

from Requiem, Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)Translated by Richard McKane 'The hour of remembrance has drawn close again. I see you, hear you, feel you: the one they could hardly get to the window, the one who no longer walks on this earth, the one who shook her beautiful head, and said: 'Coming here is like coming home.' I would like to name them all but they took away the list and there's no way of finding them. For them I have woven a wide shroud from the humble words I heard among them. I remember them always, everywhere, I will never forget them, whatever comes.'

This Month we feature our New autumn Poems on the Underground with poems by the New Zealand poet Fleur Adcock, the American writer Raymond Carver, the South African poet Gabeba Baderoon, and the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam as well as poems by Foyle Young Poets Arthur Lawson and Dawn Sands. Look out for these on London Underground and Overground trains through November.

To mark Armistice Day, we are featuring poems displayed on the underground to commemorate the First World War, and touching on wars from the earliest times to the present.

War Poems on the Underground leaflet

New autumn Poems on the Underground

Dragonfly by Fleur Adcock

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)

Late Fragment by Raymond Carver

Late Fragment by Raymond Carver And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. Poems on the Underground Reprinted by permission of Vintage from All of Us: Collected Poems (1997)

Goldfinch, friend, I’ll cock my head— by Osip Mandelstam, translated from the Russian by Andrew Davis

Goldfinch, friend, I’ll cock my head— by Osip Mandelstam translated from the Russian by Andrew Davis Goldfinch, friend, I’ll cock my head— Let’s check the world out, just me and you: This winter’s day pricks like chaff; Does it sting your eyes too? Boat-tailed, feathers yellow-black, Sopped in color beneath your beak, Do you get, you goldfinch you, Just how you flaunt it? What’s he thinking, little airhead— White and yellow, black and red! Both eyes check both ways—both!— Will check no more—he’s bolted! December 9-27, 1936 Poems on the Underground Reprinted by permission of New York Review Books from Osip Mandelstam, Voronezh Notebooks (2016)

Always for the First Time by Gabeba Baderoon

Always for the First Time by Gabeba Baderoon We tell our stories of war like stories of love, innocent as eggs. But we will meet memory again at the wall around our city, always for the first time. Poems on the Underground Reproduced with the permission of Kwela, an imprint of NB Publishers from The Dream in the Next Body (2005)

Anglerfish by Arthur Lawson

anglerfish by Artur Lawson this is the midnight zone where you could float for a lifetime in blue and never even realise you’d been born, not recognising your form or any other, or contemplating breath in this perfect improbable silence – this crushing expanse where everything is bright and dim and possible Young Poets on the Underground

Epilogue by Dawn Sands

Epilogue by Dawn Sands But the purest memory is the storybook moment when we stood there, rain-drenched girls, elbow-high, and for once we became the characters we pencilled to paper like prayers as she asked the question every ten-year-old soul wants to hold in her heartbeat forever: can we be best friends? No popularity contest, no magic wish. Just two clouds of loneliness converging in a clap of thunderlight, a starlit dream to cradle us till next winter. Young Poets on the Underground

Dawn Sands reading Epilogue

War Poems on the Underground

Everyone Sang by Siegfried Sassoon Poems on the Underground 1999 poster 'Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom, Winging wildly across the white Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight. Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted; And beauty came like the setting sun: My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away ... O, but Everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.'

Everyone Sang by Siegfried Sassoon read by Adrian Mitchell

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. '

1915 I know the truth – give up all other truths! by Marina Tsvetayeva translated by Elaine Feinstein read by Cicely Herbert

Harmonica by Michael Longley read by Ian Duhig

A Dead Statesman, Rudyard Kipling 'I could not dig: I dared not rob: Therefore I lied to please the mob. Now all my lies are proved untrue And I must face the men I slew. What tale shall serve me here among Mine angry and defrauded young?'

A Dead Statesman by Rudyard Kipling read by Gerard Benson

And Yet The Books, Czeslaw Milosz ' And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings, That appeared once, still wet As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn, And, touched, coddled, began to live In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up, Tribes on the march, planets in motion. “We are, ” they said, even as their pages Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame Licked away their letters. So much more durable Than we are, whose frail warmth Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes. I imagine the earth when I am no more: Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant, Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.'

And Yet the Books by Czeslaw Milosz read by Gerard Benson

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.'

Accordionist read by George Szirtes

The Long War by Laurie Lee

The Long War by Laurie Lee 'Less passionate the long war throws its burning thorn about all men, caught in one grief, we share one wound, and cry one dialect of pain. We have forgot who fired the house, Whose easy mischief spilled first blood, Under one raging roof we lie The fault no longer understood. But as our twisted arms embrace the desert where our cities stood , Death's family likeness in each face must show, at last, our brotherhood.'

August 1914 by Isaac Rosenberg

August 1914 , Isaac Rosenberg 'What in our lives is burnt In the fire of this? The heart's dear granary? The much we shall miss? Three lives hath one life— Iron, honey, gold. The gold, the honey gone— Left is the hard and cold. Iron are our lives Molten right through our youth. A burnt space through ripe fields, A fair mouth's broken tooth.'

Im Osten / In the East by Georg Trakl translated by David Constantine

Im Osten / In the East , Georg Trakl, tr. David Constantine 'Like the wild organ music of the winter storm Is the dark rage of the people The crimson wave of battle, Of leafless stars. With broken brows, with silver arms Night beckons to dying soldiers. In the shadow of the autumnal ash The ghosts of the slain are sighing. A thorny wilderness girdles the town. The moon harries the terrified women From bleeding steps. Wild wolves broke through the gate.'

Lost in France by Ernest Rhys

Lost in France, Ernest Rhys ' He had the plowman's strength In the grasp of his hand. He could see a crow Three miles away, And the trout beneath the stone.'

Fratelli/ Brothers by Giuseppe Ungaretti translated by Patrick Creagh

Fratelli/Brothers, Giuseppe Ungaretti , tr. Patrick Creagh ' What regiment are you from brothers? Word trembling in the night A leaf just opening In the racked air involuntary revolt of man face to face with his own fragility Brothers Mariano 15 July 2016'

Bach and the Sentry by Ivor Gurney

Bach and the Sentry, Ivor Gurney 'Watching the dark my spirit rose in flood On that most dearest Prelude of my delight. The low-lying mist lifted its hood, The October stars showed nobly in clear night. When I return, and to real music-making, And play that Prelude, how will it happen then? Shall I feel as I felt, a sentry hardly waking, With a dull sense of No Man's Land again?'

Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen

Anthem for Doomed Youth, Wilfred Owen 'What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? — Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,— The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.'

Grass by Carl Sandburg

Grass by Carl Sandburg ' Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now? I am the grass. Let me work.'

Inscription for a War by A. D. Hope

Inscription for a War, A.D. Hope ' Linger not, stranger; shed no tear; Go back to those who sent us here. We are the young they drafted out To wars their folly brought about'

Passing-Bells by Carol Ann Duffy

Passing-Bells, Carol Ann Duffy ' That moment when the soldier's soul passed through his wounds, slipped through the staunching fingers of his friend then, like a shadow, ran across a field to vanish, vanish, into empty air...'

Armistice Day by Charles Causley

Armistice Day, Charles Causley 'I stood with three comrades in Parliament Square, November her grey freights of fire unloading, '

Heroes by Kathleen Raine

Heroes, Kathleen Raine ' This war's dead heroes, who has seen them? They rise, in smoke above the burning city, Faint clouds, dissolving into sky'

Poems for Peace

Moment in a Peace March by Grace Nichols

Moment in a Peace March, Grace Nichols ‘A holy multitude pouring Moment in a Peace March through the gates of Hyde Park – A great hunger repeated in cities all over the world’

And they shall beate their swords into plow-shares Isiah 2.4, King James Bible

Isaiah 2.4 'And they shall beate their swords into plow-shares, and their speares into pruning hookes; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learne warre any more'

Optimistic Little Poem by Hans Magnus Enzensberger translated by David Constantine

Optimistic Little Poem Hans Magnus Enzensberger tr. David Constantine ' Now and then it happens that somebody shouts for help and somebody else jumps in at once and absolutely gratis. Here in the thick of the grossest capitalism round the corner comes the shining fire brigade and extinguishes, or suddenly there's silver in the beggar's hat. Mornings the streets are full of people hurrying here and there without daggers in their hands, quite equably after milk or radishes. As though in a time of deepest peace. A splendid sight.'

George Square by Jackie Kay

George Square by Jackie Kay ' My seventy-seven-year-old father put his reading glasses on to help my mother do the buttons on the back of her dress. ‘What a pair the two of us are!’ my mother said, ‘Me with my sore wrist, you with your bad eyes, your soft thumbs!’ And off they went, my two parents to march against the war in Iraq, him with his plastic hips, her with her arthritis, to congregate at George Square, where the banners waved at each other like old friends, flapping, where they’d met for so many marches over their years, for peace on earth, for pity’s sake, for peace, for peace.' Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from Darling: New & Selected Poems (2007)

from Piers Plowman by William Langland

from Piers Plowman by William Langland (c. 1332-1400) "After sharp showers," said Peace, "the sun shines brightest; No weather is warmer than after watery clouds, Nor any love dearer, or more loving friends Than after war and woe, when Love and Peace are masters. There was never war in this world, or wickedness so keen, That Love, if he liked, could not turn to laughter, And Peace, through patience, put an end to all perils." Illustration "God spede ye plough", Trinity MS R.3.14, f.1v reprinted by permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge

And Now Goodbye by Jaroslav Seifert tr. Ewald Osers

World Poems on the Underground And now goodbye, Jaroslav Seifert. Poetry is with us from the start.

Poems from October 2024