POEMS FOR THESE TIMES
Poems for These Times: 18 – New Year 2024
Benjamin Zepahniah | Faceless
“You have to look beyond the face
to see the person true
Down within my inner space
I am the same as you…”
Poems for These Times: 17
Taras Shevchenko | Calamity Again
“Dear God, calamity again!
It was so peaceful, so serene;
We had just begun to break the chains…”
Poems for These Times: 16
Jane Hirshfield | The Monk Stood Beside a Wheelbarrow
“The monk stood by a wheelbarrow, weeping.
God or Buddha nowhere to be seen –
These tears were fully human…”
Poems for These Times: 15
Laurie Lee | Twelfth Night
“No night could be darker than this night, no cold so cold,
as the blood snaps like a wire
and the heart’s sap stills…”
Poems for These Times: A Reflection
Jane Clark and Barbara Vellacott review the poetry series we presented during the Covid-19 lockdown, March – June 2020
Poetry engages the imagination, and can touch us deeply, body and soul; it can bring us to a sense of our common humanity
Poems for These Times: 14
Seamus Heaney | From The Cure at Troy
“… So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here…”
Poems for These Times: 13
Kathleen Raine | The Instrument
“… And it may be that soul extends
Organs of sense
Tuned to waves here scarcely heard…”
Poems for These Times: 12
Ted Hughes | A Green Mother
“Why are you afraid?
In the house of the dead are many cradles.
The earth is a busy hive of heavens…”
Poems for These Times: 11
John Milton | “Adam’s Lament” from Paradise Lost
“O miserable mankind, to what fall
Degraded, to what wretched state reserved!…”
Poems for These Times: 10
Elizabeth Jennings | Song of Time
“Deliver time and let it go
Under wild clouds and passive moon.
Once it was fast, now it is slow…”
Poems for These Times: 9
Rainer Maria Rilke | The Tenth Duino Elegy
“Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight,
let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels…”
Poems for These Times: 8
Benjamin Zephaniah | The Old Truth
“Rumour has it
Once upon a time
Dere was Peace, Luv and Unity…”
Poems for These Times: 7
Rupert Brooke | The Dead
“These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth…”
Poems for These Times: 6
Amir Khusrau | Ghazal 1836
“Green is newly sprouted
and rain comes scattering pearls
and the heart comes
to incline to fields
and flowing waters…”
Poems for These Times: 5
Jane Hirshfield | The Weighing
“The heart’s reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest will carry
its whip-marks and sadness…
Poems for These Times: 4
D. H. Lawrence | Trust
“Oh we’ve got to trust
one another again
in some essentials…”
Poems for These Times: 3
Czesław Miłosz | Before Majesty
“It is bitter to praise God in misfortune…”
Poems for These Times: 2
Lao Tzu | Tao Te Ching, Chapter Forty-seven
“Without going outside, you may know the whole world…”
Poems for These Times: 1
Lynn Ungar | Pandemic
“What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times? […]”
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