Poetictouch

Abki Ala Ma Jarali

2012-02-28T09:13:00.002+03:00

Tareq Abdel Hakim - Abki Ala Ma Jarali

Tareq Abdel Hakim sings Abki Ala Ma Jarali

Exorcism

2012-02-26T08:47:00.002+03:00

Diane Wakoski reads her poem Exorcism

Exorcism
by Diane Wakoski (1937-)

for my mother & a man who reminds me of her

get out.
stop dragging your feet through my veins
stop tripping over the flowerpots full of Heartsease at my elbow
stop sitting and sighing in my living room.
I live there.
stop mumbling your answers
stop hanging around with nothing to say
stop leaving your door open all the time
stop hanging on
give up. die. let yourself be pulled through the fire
if you come out of it
you will know how it really is to die
and how then
to be passionate for life
how to be hungry to move
to never stand still
to speak without mumbling
You exist by my pity
You want to remind me that you don't have what you want
You wait, hoping that I will give you some answers
will melt away your panic about life,
will put my energy in you to keep you going,
will reassure you that you are noble for suffering.
But I will not.
I will shake you angrily to make you see movement.
I will shout at you to hurt your eardrums and make you remember
pain, the first sensation of living,
I will slam your sloppy open door and scold you for your messy habits
I will wake you up when you want to sleep, typing or playing music
and I will ignore you when you want to be awake
I will find love defiantly to show you it exists only when you are not pining.
I will point to my scars constantly and remind you that they are
what wake me up and renew my desire to live.
I will wish and pine and long for my own goals but show you
those feelings are only beautiful when backed up by spunk and willpower
and the drive and energy to explore everywhere,
to look for beauty in each motion.
And I will even endure you,
will not send you away from my house,
will try to find some beauty in your ridiculous life.
Will not throw you out in the world
as you deserve to be,
you slug who crawls on my damp sidewalks without even a shell,
you broken jellyfish who gives swimmers a rash,
you poor sad poet with nothing to say
without even the energy to lead your own life with any style.

1969

The Life That I Have

2012-02-25T14:46:00.001+03:00

Richard Armitage reads Leo Marks's The Life That I Have - Marks was a cryptographer in World War II and he wrote this as a code-poem for Violette Szabo, an agent sent to work in France who was later captured and killed.

The Life That I Have
by Leo Marks (1920-2001)

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours.

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.

Empty Silences

2012-02-25T14:31:00.002+03:00

Richard Armitage reads T. S. Eliot's Empty Silences

Empty Silences
by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Along the city streets
It is still high tide,
Yet the garrulous waves of life
Shrink and divide
With a thousand incidents
Vexed and debated -
This is the hour for which we waited -

This is the ultimate hour
When life is justified.
The seas of experience
That were so broad and deep,
So immediate and steep,
Are suddenly still.
You may say what you will,
At such peace I am terrified.
There is nothing else beside.

La Guitarra

2012-02-23T23:08:00.003+03:00

Federico Garcia Lorca - La Guitarra
Recited by Celeste Alías

La Guitarra
Federico García Lorca (1898-1936)

Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Se rompen las copas
de la madrugada.
Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Es inútil callarla.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora monótona
como llora el agua,
como llora el viento
sobre la nevada.
Es imposible
callarla,
Llora por cosas
lejanas.
Arena del Sur caliente
que pide camelias blancas.
Llora flecha sin blanco,
la tarde sin mañana,
y el primer pájaro muerto
sobre la rama
¡Oh guitarra!
Corazón malherido
por cinco espadas.

Kaif Atoub

2012-02-21T09:51:00.002+03:00

Touha - Kaif Atoub

Touha sings Kaif Atoub - Oud Performance - Rare Recording

Planet Earth

2012-02-16T13:19:00.001+03:00

Michael Jackson reads his poem Planet Earth

Planet Earth
by Michael Jackson (1958-2009)

Planet Earth, my home, my place
A capricious anomaly in the sea of space
Planet Earth, are you just
Floating by, a cloud of dust
A minor globe, about to bust
A piece of metal bound to rust
A speck of matter in a mindless void
A lonely spacship, a large asteroid
Cold as a rock without a hue
Held together with a bit of glue
Something tells me this isn't true
You are my swweetheart, soft and blue
Do you care, have you a part
In the deepest emotions of my own heart
Tender with breezes, caressing and whole
Alive with music, haunting my soul.
In my veins I've felt the mystery
Of corridors of time, books of hisotry
Life songs of ages throbbing in my blood
Have danced the rhythm of the tide and flood
Your misty clouds, your electric storm
Were turbulent tempests in my own form
I've licked the salt, the bitter, the sweet
Of every encounter, of passion, of heat
Your riotous color, your fragrance, your taste
Have thrilled my senses beyond all haste
In your beauty, I've known the how
Of timeless bliss, this moment of now.
Planet Earth are you just
Floating by, a cloud of dust
A minor globe, about to bust
A piece of metal bound to rust
A speck of matter in a mindless void
A lonely spacship, a large asteroid
Cold as a rock without a hue
Held together with a bit of glue
Something tells me this isn't true
You are my swweetheart gentle and blue
Do you care, have you a part
In the deepest emotions of my own heart
Tender with breezes, caressing and whole
Alive with music, haunting my soul.
Planet Earth, gentle and blue
With all my heart, I love you.

The Four Steps

2012-02-13T15:01:00.002+03:00

Ezra Pound - The Four Steps

Ezra Pound - The Four Steps - Pound outlines his antipathy towards all forms of bureacracy - Recorded 21 June 1958 - BBC Home Service.

Foq El-Shok

2012-02-12T22:05:00.002+03:00

Abdel Halim Hafez - Foq El-Shok

Abdel Halim Hafez sings Foq El-Shok - A rare concert introduced by the renowned Egyptian actor Abdel Mon'em Madbouly - Lyrics: Ali Mahdi - Composer: Mohammed Abdel Wahhab

Love After Love

2012-01-19T03:59:00.001+03:00

Derek Walcott - Love After Love - Read by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Love After Love
by Derek Walcott (1930-)

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

The Listeners

2011-11-05T20:17:00.001+03:00

The Listeners by Walter De La Mare
Adventures In Poetry - BBC Radio 4
Presented by Peggy Reynolds

The Listeners
by Walter De La Mare (1873-1956)

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor;
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
"Is there anybody there?" he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head: —
"Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word," he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

In Memoriam

2011-09-17T14:07:00.002+03:00

In Memoriam
In Our Time
29 June 2011

Melvyn and guests discuss one of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's greatest poem's, 'In Memoriam A.H.H.'. Written as a tribute to his best friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly and tragically at the age of 22, the poem offers an insight into Tennyson's deepest feelings of grief and loss. As well as being a heart-rending elegy, the poem also considers the new geological ideas that were coming to light at the time and the questions this knowledge raised about the history of the Earth as outlined in the Bible. Melvyn is joined by Dinah Birch, Professor of English Literature and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at Liverpool University; Seamus Perry, Fellow and Tutor in English at Balliol College, University of Oxford; and Jane Wright, Lecturer in English at the University of Bristol.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

2011-09-17T14:00:00.002+03:00

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
In Our Time
06 January 2011

Melvyn Bragg and guests consider the poem which allegedly made the Romantic English poet, Lord Byron, famous. 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' was a thinly veiled autobiographical poem recounting Byron's travels through the Mediterranean, the tales of the first and archetypal 'Byronic Hero'. Melvyn is joined by Jonathan Bate, Professor of English Literature at the University of Warwick; Jane Stabler, Reader in Romanticism at the University of St Andrews; and Emily Bernhard Jackson, Assistant Professor in Nineteenth-Century English Literature at the University of Arkansas.

Metaphor

2011-09-17T13:53:00.002+03:00

Metaphor
In Our Time
25 November 2010

Melvyn Bragg and guests explore metaphor; the literary device that pervades our language, literature and lives. From medieval literature to Shakespeare, the Metaphysical poets and Virginia Woolf, this programme considers the role of metaphor in their work and more. Melvyn Bragg is joined by Julie Sanders, Professor of English Literature and Drama at the University of Nottingham; Steve Connor, Professor of Modern Literature and Theory at Birkbeck, University of London; and Tom Healy, Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Sussex.

Fern Hill

2011-09-17T01:14:00.028+03:00

Fern Hill
by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
Read by the author

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.