This Month’s Poems

The Spring Poems on the Underground go live on London Underground and Overground trains for 4 weeks from 9th February with poems by Kobayashi Issa, Rachael Boast, Mircea Dinescu, Jonathan Davidson, Blake Morrison and Jane Hirshfield

February’s poems feature a mix of international poets and contemporary British writers, many of which deal with the moments of profundity that can be found as we move about the mundane moments of our day-to-day lives. Kobayashi Issa’s haiku, featuring calligraphy by Yukki Yaura, celebrates the coming of spring and captures the sudden awakening of a frozen world.

The Poems are:

The snow is melting by Kobayashi Issa translated by Robert Hass Calligraphy by Yukki Yaura Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson and Issa, tr. Robert Hass (Bloodaxe Books, 2013)

The snow is melting and the village is flooded with children. Kobayashi Issa translated by Robert Hass Calligraphy by Yukki Yaura Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson and Issa, tr. Robert Hass (Bloodaxe Books, 2013)

Syzygy by Rachael Boast Reprinted by permission of Pan Macmillan from Sidereal (Picador 2011) 

Syzygy A desire for a house with a glass roof made me get up and walk the streets at four in the morning. The full moon was looking as if she’d passed a loaded remark at some conference that was drawing to a close. How strange for the world to have turned and be facing the other way again. Why do we sleep through these great rotations? The night sky sometimes likes a good conversation and gives me plenty of time to speak before thinking. Rachael Boast Reprinted by permission of Pan Macmillan from Sidereal (Picador 2011)

Myopic Painter by Mircea Dinescu translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Lidia Vianu Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from The Barbarians’ Return(2018)

Myopic painter Many a madman has imagined himself a general and some have even become one, the myopic decorator of Easter eggs may one day paint a church and it’s not impossible that a comet will later crash into its steeple and cry out, ‘Christ is risen’ just as you who swear you love me may once upon a time even come to love me. Mircea Dinescu translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Lidia Vianu Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from The Barbarians’ Return (2018)

A Short Piece of Choral Music by Jonathan Davidson Reprinted by permission of The Poetry Business from Early Train (Smith/Doorstop 2011)

A Short Piece of Choral Music It’s an evening in late March and in the kitchen I’m listening to a short piece of choral music, when my son comes in to fetch himself a bowl of breakfast cereal which, he tells me, helps with his revision. And another thing, he goes on, I shouldn’t worry about him because he’s going to be fine: exams, work, life, everything, is going to be fine. That’s a relief, I say to myself, thanks, now I can listen to this music, which turns out to be just some fancy noise, nothing compared with a boy’s cheerfulness. Jonathan Davidson Reprinted by permission of The Poetry Business from Early Train (Smith/Doorstop 2011)

Narcissus by Blake Morrison  Reprinted by permission of Chatto & Windus from Shingle Street (2015)

Narcissus Thinking the boiler had packed up from lack of oil I climbed the rusty tank to peer down the hatch and there I was, bright-faced and young again, in the viscous black pool at the bottom. Blake Morrison Reprinted by permission of Chatto & Windus from Shingle Street (2015)

Da Capo by Jane Hirshfield Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from The Asking: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2024)

Da Capo Take the used-up heart like a pebble and throw it far out. Soon there is nothing left. Soon the last ripple exhausts itself in the weeds. Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery. Glaze them in oil before adding the lentils, water, and herbs. Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt. Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat. You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life. Jane Hirshfield Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from The Asking: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2024)

This month we are marking the Chinese New Year with poems featuring original calligraphy by the renowned artist Qu Lei Lei and translations by contemporary poets. We also feature poems from our Love Poems and February Poems Leaflets.

Chinese Poems on the Underground

Winter Travels, Bei Dao ' who's typing on the void too many stories they're twelve stones hitting the clockface twelve swans flying out of winter tongues in the night describe gleams of light blind bells cry out for someone absent entering the room you see that jester's entered winter leaving behind flame'
Vase, Yang Lian 'a word eradicates the world a feather drifts down and yet, a bird's nest in each of its fragments preserves the whole'
New Year 1933 by Lu Xun (1881 - 1936) Translated by W.J.F. Jenner, Calligraphy by Qu Lei Lei 'The general sits safe on his cloud - wrapped peak While thunderbolts slaughter the humble in their hovels. Far better to live in the International Settlement ,Where the clacking of mahjong heralds the spring .' Chinese Poems on the Underground
Listening to a Monk from Shu Playing the Lute, Li Bai 'The monk from Shu with his green lute-case walked Westward down Emei Shan,

February Poems on the Underground

February – not everywhere by Norman MacCaig

February-not everywhere by Norman MacCaig (1910-96) ' Such days, when trees run downwind, their arms stretched before them. Such days, when the sun's in a drawer and the drawer locked. When the meadow is dead, is a carpet, thin and shabby, with no pattern and at bus stops people retract into collars their faces like fists. -And when, in a firelit room, a mother looks at her four seasons, at her little boy, in the centre of everything, with still pools of shadows and a fire throwing flowers. '

Letters from Yorkshire by Maura Dooley

Letters From Yorkshire by Maura Dooley (b.1957) ' In February, digging his garden, planting potatoes, he saw the first lapwings return and came indoors to write to me, his knuckles singing as they reddened in the warmth. It's not romance, simply how things are. You out there, in the cold, seeing the seasons turning, me with my heartful of headlines feeding words onto a blank screen. Is your life more real because you dig and sow? You wouldn't say so, breaking ice on a waterbutt, clearing a path through snow. Still, it's you who sends me word of that other world pouring air and light into an envelope. So that at night, watching the same news in different houses, our souls tap out messages over the icy miles'

25 February 1944 Primo Levi

25 February 1944 Primo Levi tr. Eleonora Chiavetta ' I wish I could believe in something beyond, Beyond the death that has undone you. I wish I could tell of the strength With which we longed then, Already drowned, To walk together once again Free under the sun.'

Thaw by Edward Thomas

Thaw, Edward Thomas ' Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed The speculating rooks at their nests cawed And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flowers of grass, What we below could not see, Winter pass'

Thaw by David Malouf

Thaw by David Malouf (b.1934) ' The season midnight: glass cracks with cold. From lighted shop-windows girls half-sleeping, numb with frost step out. We warm their hands between our hands, we kiss them awake, and the planets melt on their cheeks. First touch, first tears. Behind their blue eyes darkness shatters its pane of ice. We step through into a forest of sunlight, sunflowers. '

Honesty by Kit Wright

Love Poems on the Underground

Two Fragments by Sappho translated by Cicely Herbert

Two Fragments, Sappho (7th Century B.C.) translated by Cicely Herbert Poems on the Underground 1992 ' As a gale on the mountainside bends the oak tree I am rocked by my love. Love holds me captive again and I tremble with bittersweet longing.''

Longings by C.P. Cavafy translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Longings by C.P. Cavafy ( 1863-1933) Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard 'Like the beautiful bodies of those who died before growing old, sadly shut away in sumptuous mausoleum, roses by the head, jasmine at the feet - so appear the longings that have passed without being satisfied, not one of the granted a single night of pleasure, or one of its radiant mornings.'

Her Anxiety by W.B. Yeats

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare 1998 Poster Poems on the Underground ' Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments; love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove'

Hour by Carol Ann Duffy

Hour, Carol Ann Duffy ‘Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour, bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich. We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers or wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch.’

The Good Morrow by John Donne

The Good Morrow by John Donne (1572-1631) ' I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then, But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den? 'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be. If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee. And now good morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For love, all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room, an everywhere. Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone, Let maps to others, worlds on worlds have shown, Let us possess our world; each hath one, and is one. My face in thine eyes, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we find two better hemispheres, Without sharp North, without declining West? Whatever dies, was not mixed equally; If our two loves be one, or thou and I Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die. ' Poems on the Underground The British Council. The British Library (Zweig Programme). Designed by Tom Davidson

Music When Soft Voices Die by Percy Bysshe Shelley

To- P.B. Shelley '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.'

Love Poems Leaflet

February Poems Leaflet

Poems from January 2026

New Poems Spring 2025

New Poems Summer 2025

New Poems Autumn 2025

Poems from 2025

Poems from 2024

poems from 2023

poems from 2022

poems from 2021

Poems from 2020

War Poems on the Underground leaflet

Poems on the Underground at the Scottish Poetry Library