"Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" by Dylan Thomas

This is a recording of Dylan Thomas reciting his villanelle "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night". Transcript beneath the video.

Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Sea Fever by John Masefield

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking,

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

"Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Another classic brought to life through being spoken well, this time by a bloke called David Olney, who I think does it justice.

Kubla Khan

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
   Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
   The shadow of the dome of pleasure
   Floated midway on the waves;
   Where was heard the mingled measure
   From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

   A damsel with a dulcimer
   In a vision once I saw:
   It was an Abyssinian maid
   And on her dulcimer she played,
   Singing of Mount Abora.
   Could I revive within me
   Her symphony and song,
   To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

sylvie

if we’d met

imagined

as friends

  lovers

  conspirators…

but we didn’t

  you’re real only

  in other worlds

this titillation

  love disguised

  in entertainment

  in lust

  admiration

  effort

  that lies behind such effortless grace

dedication

thinking about it

we’d not be friends

my laziness would appall your diligent

  discipline

  determination

  courage

  etcetera

but I’m imagining

  so it matters not

  for these 7 minutes and 56 seconds

  while I watch

  mesmerised

entranced by your form

and

you can train on your own time

without disturbing

my sleep

Who Says Words With My Mouth? by Rumi

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

This poetry, I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

"How Do I Love Thee?" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Peanuts lovely rendition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?" (from "Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown" - 1975)

How Do I Love Thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men might strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,–I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Wet Evening in April by Patrick Kavanagh

The birds sang in the wet trees
And I listened to them it was a hundred years from now
And I was dead and someone else was listening to them.
But I was glad I had recorded for him
The melancholy.

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

"The Pig" by Roald Dahl

Here's a favourite kid's poem from the brilliant mind of Roald Dahl, brought to life wonderfully by Laura Dockrill

The Pig

In England once there lived a big
And wonderfully clever pig.
To everybody it was plain
That Piggy had a massive brain.
He worked out sums inside his head,
There was no book he hadn't read.
He knew what made an airplane fly,
He knew how engines worked and why.
He knew all this, but in the end
One question drove him round the bend:
He simply couldn't puzzle out
What LIFE was really all about.
What was the reason for his birth?
Why was he placed upon this earth?
His giant brain went round and round.
Alas, no answer could be found.
Till suddenly one wondrous night.
All in a flash he saw the light.
He jumped up like a ballet dancer
And yelled, 'By gum, I've got the answer! '
'They want my bacon slice by slice
'To sell at a tremendous price!
'They want my tender juicy chops
'To put in all the butcher's shops!
'They want my pork to make a roast
'And that's the part'll cost the most!
'They want my sausages in strings!
'They even want my chitterlings!
'The butcher's shop! The carving knife!
'That is the reason for my life! '
Such thoughts as these are not designed
To give a pig great piece of mind.
Next morning, in comes Farmer Bland,
A pail of pigswill in his hand,
And piggy with a mighty roar,
Bashes the farmer to the floor…
Now comes the rather grisly bit
So let's not make too much of it,
Except that you must understand
That Piggy did eat Farmer Bland,
He ate him up from head to toe,
Chewing the pieces nice and slow.
It took an hour to reach the feet,
Because there was so much to eat,
And when he finished, Pig, of course,
Felt absolutely no remorse.
Slowly he scratched his brainy head
And with a little smile he said,
'I had a fairly powerful hunch
'That he might have me for his lunch.
'And so, because I feared the worst,
'I thought I'd better eat him first.'

after the rain

at last

I can breathe

again

taste

clean rain

in the air

a fleeting

freshness

everywhere

temporarily

the man made stench is

muted

those red, red roses

My love is like a red, rose rose
Organic and quite wholesome,
But failing that I'd settle for
Her without her clothes on.

"Daddy" by Sylvia Plath

This is a recording of Sylvia Plath reading her poem, Daddy. Transcript beneath the video as is becoming the usual form.

Daddy

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat moustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion by Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

loss

sending back your passport
was hard
  your driving licence
  credit cards
  souvenirs
  and other memorabilia
of a life
dissipated
disolved

deleting your name from bills
  gas
  electric
  phone
none of them
were you
and so how is it i feel
i'm erasing your life
delivering your presence
banishing
you

this cluttered house so
  empty
from the worn armchair
  useless
to the large pans
that now must only hold food
for one

so to hold back the tears
i fill sheet
after sheet
after sheet
with words
words
that never
could
replace you.

humbly...

No hablo español

  Je parle pas le français

Eu falo não Portuguese

وأنا أتكلم العربية لا

私は日本語を話せない

  Я не говорю по-русски

Ngikhuluma akukho Zulu

  Jag talar inte svenska

I nie mówić po polsku

  我说没有中国

ਮੈਨੂੰ ਕੋਈ ਵੀ ਪੰਜਾਬ ਦੇ ਨਾਲ ਗੱਲ

  Ik spreek geen Nederlands

אני מדבר בעברית

  Yr wyf yn siarad Cymraeg

Ich spreche kein Deutsch

  Magsalita akong mga Pilipino

Hitz egiten dut euskaraz ez

  நான் எந்த தமிழ் பேச

Korero ahau kahore he Maori

  Labhairt mé aon Ghaeilge

Και δεν μιλάω καθόλου ελληνικά

میں نے اردو میں بات

Я не говорю по-українськи

  Nasema hakuna swahili

I'm

grateful though

that

you
learned

english

"Evidently Chickentown" by John Cooper Clarke NSFW

A combination of a great actor, in this case Christopher Eccleston, and a great poem. This rendition of John Cooper Clarke's "Evidently Chickentown" is a clip taken from a 2001 TV movie called, Strumpet.

Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

granddad's legacy

i was just a boy
as you were just a man
  seen through childhood's eye
  watching you work

you left clues
souvenirs
  those boats you built
  i pass whenever i leave

  and donkey drawn carriages
you should be pleased
your craft
makes children laugh
still

now you're just memories
and i just a man
remembering you fondly
  the scent of fresh cut wood

later that evening...

I gaze inside this beer can

So sad that it is empty,

But fortunately inside the fridge

There sits another twenty.

This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
    By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
    It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
    And don’t have any kids yourself.

"Worst Poetry" by Sarah Kay

Sarah Kay performs "Worst Poetry" as part of Taylor & Marie-Elizabeth Mali's "Page Meets Stage Series," at the Bowery Poetry Club. Feb 2011

...so true. 

“Ough”

English is simultaneously easy and difficult as a language. In it’s favour, there’s no need to worry about whether an orange is feminine or masculine, but there’s also much going against in terms of pronunciation.

I’ll get onto the weirdness of “Belvoir”, “Fetherstonehough”, and other strangely pronounced words in another post, but for now I want to give a respectful nod to the complexity of “ough”.

This seemingly benign little collection of letters can be pronounced in at least ten different ways. Here are a handful of examples:

Examples	Comments on Pronunciation
Tough, Enough, Rough	Pronounced with an “uff” sound, like Stuff
Trough, Cough	Pronounced with an “off” sound, like Toff
Plough, Bough	Pronounced with an “Ow” sound, like How
Though, Dough	Pronounced with an “O” sound, like Show
Thought, Sought, Brought	Pronounced with an “Aw’t” sound, like Short
Hiccough	This one is hilariously pronounced with an “Up” sound, like Cup.
Lough	Pronounced with an “Ock” sound, like Clock

There are several less common variations too, but this gives you a good idea of the strangeness if you’re not a native English speaker. To add further to the complications, these pronunciations aren’t necessarily the same across the language used in all countries, and only really apply to British English.

So if you’re not a native speaker and have a thought that you’ll go to Peterborough, to buy a Plough, you might find it tough!