Poems on the Underground 40 Poems for 40 Years

We are delighted to celebrate 40 years of Poems on the Underground with a free leaflet of 40 of our favourite poems.

Copies are available from selected London Underground stations, the Poetry Society, the National Poetry Library, and London Transport Museum.

Read the Poems on the Underground 40 Poems for 40 Years Leaflet

Listen to all the poems in the Poems on the Underground 40 Poems for 40 years leaflet

Poems on the Underground has been offering poems of all times and places to a mass public since 1986. We hope a collection of 40 poems from our displays is a welcome addition to the poems which appear three times a year on London’s Underground and Overground cars. The poems included here are among the most popular with Tube travellers, along with our own special favourites. The themes of poets from Shakespeare’s time to our own recur: love, the natural world, society past and present, and poetry itself. We hope the poems, in all their variety of tone and subject, appeal to new readers as well as dedicated poetry-lovers.

You can find all the poems in their original poster form below

Lady Augusta Gregory I am Raftery the Poet

Louis MacNeice What is Truth?

Agha Shahid Ali Stationery

Stationery, Agha Shahid Ali ' The moon did not become the sun. It just fell on the desert in great sheets, reams of silver handmade by you. The night is your cottage industry now, the day is your brisk emporium. The world is full of paper. Write to me. '

Kit Wright Honesty

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

Kwame Dawes Dew

Dew, Kwame Dawes ' This morning I took the dew from the broad leaf of the breadfruit tree, and washed the sleep from my eyes.

P.B. Shelley Music when soft voices die (To Emilia V)

To Emilia V - by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory - Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the beloved's bed - And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on... Manuscript reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library University of Oxford, MS. Shelley Adds. e.8, p.154 Poems on the Underground

Michael Donaghy The Present

The Present by Michael Donaghy Poems on the Underground 2001 ' For the present there is just one moon, though every level pond gives back another .But the bright disc shining in the black lagoon, perceived by astrophysicist and lover ,is milliseconds old. And even that light's seven minutes older than its source. And the stars we think we see on moonless nights are long extinguished. And, of course, this very moment, as you read this line, is literally gone before you know it. Forget the here-and-now. We have no time but this device of wantonness and wit. Make me this present then: your hand in mine, and we'll live out our lives in it.'

Robert Burns John Anderson, My Jo

Gavin Ewart, A 14-Year-Old Convalescent Cat in the Winter

Gavin Ewart , A 14 year old Convalescent Cat in the Winter Poems on the Underground 1995 ' I want him to have another living summer, to lie in the sun and enjoy the douceur de vivre- because the sun, like golden rum in a rummer, is what makes an idle cat un tout petit peu ivre- I want him to lie stretched out, contented, revelling in the heat, his fur all dry and warm, an Old Age Pensioner, retired, resented by no one, and happinesses in a beelike swarm to settle on him – postponed for another season that last fated hateful journey to the vet from which there is no return (and age the reason), which must come soon – as I cannot forget''

Michael Rosen London Fields

London Fields, Michael Rosen ‘Evening falls between the trees The drumming for Ghana fills the leaves’

Mahmoud Darwish Green the land of my poem

Green the land of my poem, Mahmoud Darwish ‘Green the land of my poem is green and high Slowly I tell it slowly with the grace of a seagull riding the waves on the book of water I bequeath it written down to the one who asks to whom shall we sing when salt poisons the dew?’

Yehuda Amichai The place where we are right

The place where we are right, Yehuda Amichai ' From the place where we are right flowers will never grow in the spring. the place where we are right is hard and trampled like a yard'

Elizabeth Bishop One Art

ONE ART by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79) 'The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. - Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. '

Les Murray The Meaning of Existence

The Meaning of Existence, Les Murray ' Everything except language knows the meaning of existence. Trees, planets, rivers, time know nothing else.'

Charles Causley I Am the Song

Charles Causley, I am the Song ' I am the song that sings the bird. I am the leaf that grows the land. I am the tide that moves the moon. I am the stream that halts the sand.'

Bei Dao from Sidetracks

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

Katrina Naomi Diary

Diary by Katrina Naomi 'Her diary the way the words hurry intoeachother and then apart- as the days and her body lost out I took the diary from her bedside did nothing else no sorting of clothes touched nothing of hers save the diary, reading how she wrote across days and off the edge of the page'

Ciaran Carson Fear

Paula Meehan Seed

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.'

Seed read by Paula Meehan

Lorna Goodison Bam Chi Chi La La

Bam Chi Chi La La London, 1969, Lorna Goodison ‘In Jamaica she was a teacher. Here, she is charwoman at night in the West End. She eats a cold midnight meal carried from home’

Roger Robinson A Portable Paradise

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.’

Leanne O’Sullivan Note

Note, Leanne O’Sullivan If we become separated from each other this evening try to remember the last time you saw me and go back and wait for me there.

John O’Donohue Time to be slow

Time to be slow, John O’Donohue ‘This is the time to be slow, Lie low to the wall Until the bitter weather passes’

This is the Time to be Slow

Excerpt from For the Break-Up of a Relationship, from Benedictus (Europe) / To Bless the Space Between Us (US) by John O’Donohue

Benjamin Zephaniah The London Breed

The London Breed I love dis great polluted place Where pop stars come to live their dreams Here ravers come for drum and bass And politicians plan their schemes, The music of the world is here Dis city can play any song They came to here from everywhere Tis they that made dis city strong. A world of food displayed on streets Where all the world can come and dine On meals that end with bitter sweets And cultures melt and intertwine, Two hundred languages give voice To fifteen thousand changing years And all religions can rejoice With exiled souls and pioneers. Benjamin Zephaniah Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from Too Black Too Strong (2001)

Kamau Brathwaite Naima for John Coltrane

Naima for John Coltrane, Kamau Brathwaite 'Propped against the crowded bar he pours into the curved and silver horn his old unhappy longing for a home'

Wole Soyinka Season

Season by Wole Soyinka Poems on the Underground 1999 'Rust is ripeness, rust And the wilted corn-plume; Pollen is mating-time when swallows Weave a dance Of feathered arrows Thread corn-stalks in winged Streaks of light. And, we loved to hear Spliced phrases of the wind, to hear Rasps in the field, where corn leaves Pierce like bamboo slivers. Now, garnerers we, Awaiting rust on tassels, draw Long shadows from the dusk, wreathe Dry thatch in woodsmoke. Laden stalks Ride the germ's decay - we await The promise of the rust .Wole Soyinka (b.1934) Reprinted by permission of Methuen from Idanre and Other Poems (1986) Poems on the Underground 1,000 Years of Poetry in English

Cicely Herbert Everything Changes

Everything Changes, after Brecht Alles wandelt sich ,Cicely Herbert ‘ Alles wandelt sich. Neu beginnen Kannst du mit dem letzten Atemzug. Aber was geschehen, ist geschehen. Und das Wasser Das du in den Wein gossest, kannst du Nicht mehr herausschütten. Was geschehen, ist geschehen. Das Wasser Das du in den Wein gossest, kannst du Nicht mehr herausschütten, aber Alles wandelt sich. Neu beginnen Kannst du mit dem letzten Atemzug. Everything changes. We plant trees for those born later but what’s happened has happened, and poisons poured into the seas cannot be drained out again. What’s happened has happened. Poisons poured into the seas cannot be drained out again’, but everything changes. We plant trees for those born later.'

Grace Nichols For the Life of this Planet

For the Life of This Planet, Grace Nichols ‘ The way the red sun surrenders its wholeness to curving ocean bit by bit. The way curving ocean gives birth to the birth of stars in the growing darkness, wearing everything in its path to cosmic smoothness’

John Glenday For My Wife, Reading in Bed

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)

Gillian Clarke Six Bells

Six Bells, Gillian Clarke ‘Perhaps a woman hanging out the wash paused, hearing something, a sudden hush, a pulse inside the earth like a blow to the heart,’

Carol Ann Duffy Prayer

Prayer, Carol Ann Duffy 1999 poster, Poems on the Underground 1,000 Years of Poetry in English 'Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself. So, a woman will lift her head from the sieve of her hands and stare at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift. Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth enters our hearts, that small familiar pain; then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth in the distant Latin chanting of a train. Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales console the lodger looking out across a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls a child's name as though they named their loss. Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer - Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.'

John Donne, No Man Is an Island

'No Man is an Island' by John Donne from meditation 17, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions 'No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.'

Po Chu-i The Red Cockatoo

The Red Cockatoo Sent as a present from Annam – A red cockatoo. Coloured like the peach-tree blossom, Speaking with the speech of men. And they did to it what is always done To the learned and eloquent. They took a cage with stout bars And shut it up inside. Po Chu-i Translated by Arthur Waley Reprinted by permission of Estate of Arthur Waley. Calligraphy by Qu Lei Lei

William Shakespeare from King Lear

From King Lear, William Shakespeare ' Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these?'

W. H. Auden Epitaph on a Tyrant

Epitaph on a Tyrant by W H Auden Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

A. D. Hope Inscription for a War

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'

Janet Frame I Take into My Arms More Than I Can Bear To Hold

Copyright © Janet Frame 2006

I Take Into My Arms More Than I Can Bear To Hold by Janet Frame I take into my arms more than I can bear to hold I am toppled by the world a creation of ladders, pianos, stairs cut into the rock a devouring world of teeth where even the common snail eats the heart out of a forest as you and I do, who are human, at night yet still I take into my arms more than I can bear to hold Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency from Storms Will Tell: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books 2008)

Lucille Clifton won’t you celebrate with me

won’t you celebrate with me by Lucille Clifton won’t you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed. from The Book of Light. Copyright © 1993 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press

Czeslaw Milosz And Yet the Books

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.'