#141: May I never find myself yawning at life
Dear reader,
If you haven’t already noticed, the whole world is abuzz with poetry suddenly, owing to April being the National Poetry Writing Month. As some of you may know, I’m hosting The Alipore Post Poetry Month over on Instagram, where over 350 poets are writing daily to this prompt list. It’s not too late to join, FYI!
In honour of this month celebrating poetry, this is going to be a rather poetry-intensive newsletter, so brace yourselves. I hope you enjoy savoring the poems I’ve found for you on hope, home and searching for sunshine:
1. A Prayer by Toyohiko Kagawa
I want to be ever a child
I want to feel an eternal friendship
for the raindrops, the flowers,
the insects, the snowflakes.
I want to be keenly interested in everything,
with mind and muscle ever alert,
forgetting my troubles in the next moment.
The stars and the sea, the ponds and the trees,
the birds and the animals, are my comrades.
Though my muscles may stiffen, though my skin may
wrinkle, may I never find myself yawning
at life.
2. It’s All Right by Williams Stafford
Someone you trusted has treated you bad.
Someone has used you to vent their ill temper.
Did you expect anything different?
Your work--better than some others'--has languished,
neglected. Or a job you tried was too hard,
and you failed. Maybe weather or bad luck
spoiled what you did. That grudge, held against you
for years after you patched up, has flared,
and you've lost a friend for a time. Things
at home aren't so good; on the job your spirits
have sunk. But just when the worst bears down
you find a pretty bubble in your soup at noon,
and outside at work a bird says, "Hi!"
Slowly the sun creeps along the floor;
it is coming your way. It touches your shoe.
3. For the Moment by Pierre Revardy
Translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Life is simple and gay
The bright sun rings with a quiet sound
The sound of the bells has quieted down
This morning the light hits it all
The footlights of my head are lit again
And the room I live in is finally bright
Just one beam is enough
Just one burst of laughter
My joy that shakes the house
Restrains those wanting to die
By the notes of its song
I sing off-key
Ah it’s funny
My mouth open to every breeze
Spews mad notes everywhere
That emerge I don’t know how
To fly toward other ears
Listen I’m not crazy
I laugh at the bottom of the stairs
Before the wide-open door
In the sunlight scattered
On the wall among green vines
And my arms are held out toward you
It’s today I love you
4. Optimism by Jane Hirshfield
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs--all this resinous, unretractable earth.
5. We Are Of A Tribe by Alberto Ríos
We plant seeds in the ground
And dreams in the sky,
Hoping that, someday, the roots of one
Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other.
It has not happened yet.
We share the sky, all of us, the whole world:
Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward,
Even as we stand on uncertain ground.
The earth beneath us moves, quiet and wild,
Its boundaries shifting, its muscles wavering.
The dream of sky is indifferent to all this,
Impervious to borders, fences, reservations.
The sky is our common home, the place we all live.
There we are in the world together.
The dream of sky requires no passport.
Blue will not be fenced. Blue will not be a crime.
Look up. Stay awhile. Let your breathing slow.
Know that you always have a home here.
Recommended Listening:
3. Ross Gay - Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude with Bon Iver :')
4. Seven League Boots - Zoe Keating
5. Don’t Die Curious - Tom Rosenthal (Love the video by Chloe Jackson)
6. What baby rhinos sound like
Links of the Week:
2. Surviving a Year Without Touch
3. Time, Tarkovsky And The Pandemic
4. Elizabeth Gilbert and Julia Cameron On Creative Motivation, Personal Success and the Artist’s Way (I feel so inspired and comforted by this conversation.)
5. The latest issue of Nether Quarterly is out!
6. Tishani Doshi: Poetry Still Matters on The Quarantine Train
7. Register for Breaking Open #1: The Space to Choose (A six-week course to be more present in your daily life, more patient with yourself and others, and more intentional in your words and actions)
9. How Rubber Ducks Are Helping Scientists Chart The Oceans
10. Language Lessons by Meghana Mysore
This is my newsletter: Ananya Broker Parekh
Absolutely delighted to announce this week’s takeover of This is my newsletter by an illustrator who constantly inspires me in everything she does - Ananya Broker Parekh.
In the newsletter, she talks about finding her little corner of the world during the pandemic, the picture books she read amidst other sources of joy, and recipes that became comfort food :)
Read it here: https://thisismynewsletter.substack.com/p/this-is-my-newsletter-34-ananya-broker
1. Surya Sharma's Digital Pietra Dura
“Since I’ve recently indulged myself in the realm of digital art, I thought why not make something that is traditional as well as soothing to look at. I thought of those beautiful Pietra Duras and decided to give them a try. I made a few digital Pietra Dura, which were all appreciated by everyone in my family and friends, and thought of making more. To make them look delicate and to give them a Persian vibe, I used a natural pastel-colored palette and included floral elements to make them look more similar to that we see in Persian and Mughal architecture.”
-Surya Sharma on her Digital Pietra Dura series
Admire the full series by Surya here.
2. I dream of a poem by Shelly Bhoil (Excerpt)
“I dream of a poem
about words
without words
like a primitive thought
unborn
in the awareness
of language
then grammar
but a deciduous patois
at every step
on every tongue”
Read the full poem by Shelly here along with two other poems.
3. A place of quiet objects by Satwik Mishra (Excerpt)
“My tiny home is a shelter to ghosts of all things that retreated.
They snare at me in the hideous moments of midnight,
tiptoeing by the bedside, perchance waiting for me to sleep.
And years later, before I retire to an endless slumber, I shall leave the door ajar,
so that those who wander in search of a home are
greeted with the warmth of all that I’ve left behind.”
Read the full poem by Satwik here.
4. Home by Sejal Ghia (Excerpt)
At nine, my grandfather was a newspaper boy.
He woke before dawn and walked
along his daily route by soundless homes,
resting cows and dimly lit
tea shops, spreading news.
He brought home four annas
and a copy of Bombay Samaachar
for breakfast. His neighbor Salim, the class topper,
sang the headlines aloud
for the chawl to hear: Gandhi
e karo ya maro jaaher karyu
They raced to school and shared
a bench and, unless it was
non-veg, lunch too.
Read Sejal’s full poem here, illustrated by Prekshaa Pahuja. The two have also collaborated on another poem Watching a Ghazal on YouTube here.
5. Under the Railway Bridge at Kayamkulam by Sambhu R (Excerpt)
There is a bus stop
under the railway bridge
which I pass often
on my ramble through town.
The motorcyclists wait
on either side of the road
Read Sambhu’s full poem here.
6. My first tree by Manan Bhan (Excerpt)
“Life in our veranda predates me,
An investigation of the attic brought out memories that
Post-retirement, Daddy had made a mound amongst the concrete once
For one humble curry tree stem
The cat would dig up the soil
Looking for something only he knew
The veranda now dirty, Ammi would come scuttling out
Voicing her displeasure loud and clear in Kashmiri
He persisted, proving her reprimands futile”
Read the full poem by Manan here.
“You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what’s in your heart.”
-Carol Ann Duffy
May you experience poetry in all its glory,
Rohini
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