Today, we take on a topic close to our hearts - poetry! Dolli and I had been discussing doing an episode like this for some time, where we share our favourite poems and explore the meanings, but also why the works resonate deeply with us. From Byron to Bukowski, from Japanese poems penned by samurai to one written by yours truly, we indulge in the rhythms, the philosophies and sensuality of poetry. To see more information on the poems, scroll down on this page. I think we'll have some literary fun!

Romeo and Juliet, 1886-87, Gustav Klimt - Burgtheatre, Vienna

When We Two Parted

1

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, 1813 by Richard Westall - National Portrait Gallery, London

WHEN we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

2

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow —
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

3

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me —
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well: —
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

4

In secret we met —
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee? —
With silence and tears - George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)

"When We Two Parted" was written in 1816 and, as one can read from the text, it describes the pangs of lost love following the end of an affair, potentially an extramarital one. Some scholars believe the poem was written following Byron’s relationship with Lady Frances Wedderburn-Webster, a married aristocrat. She didn’t stop her lust with the grand poet, however, and was later rumored to have also slipped under the sheets with the Duke of Wellington, a prominent British military leader and opponent of Napoleon Bonaparte at The Battle of Waterloo.

Note: Because of potential copyright issues, please find Bukowski’s poems, ‘Friendly advice to a lot of young men’ and ‘The Laughing Heart’ via their respective links.

Remember Barbara Translation - Christijan Robert Broerse

Remember Barbara
It was raining without end in Brest that day
and you walked along, smiling
artless, satisfied, soaking wet
in the rain.
Remember Barbara
It was raining without end in Brest
and I saw you on rue de Siam,
You were smiling
and I offered a smile, as well
Remember Barbara,
You whom I did not know
You who did not know me,
Remember,
Remember, that day all the same
Do not let yourself forget,
A man sought shelter under a porch
and he called your name,
Barbara,
and you rushed over and up to him in the rain
Soaking wet, satisfied, artless
and you threw yourself in his arms.
Remember that Barbara
and don't be angry if I speak to you,
I speak to all those I love,
even if I've seen them but once
I address all those who love
even if I don't really know them.
Remember Barbara
Don't let yourself forget
that wise, happy rain
on your happy face
in that happy town
That rain rippling on the sea
on the arsenal
on the boat from Ouessant
Oh, Barbara
Such a stupid war
What has happened to you now?
In this iron downfall
of fire of steel of blood
and the one who held you tightly in his arms
lovingly,
is he dead, has he disappeared, or maybe he still lives on?
Oh Barbara,
It is raining without end in Brest,
as it has rained before.
But it's not the same and everything feels ruined
It's a rain of mourning, horrid and lonely.
It's not even a storm anymore
of iron of steel of blood.
Just simple clouds
that die like dogs
Dogs disappearing
there along the water in Brest
and are rushing off to rot far away
far, far away from Brest
where nothing remains.

-Jacques Prévert (1900-1977)

Jacques Prévert (1900-1977) was a prominent poet and writer who emerged onto the French literary scene following the second world war. In addition to writing poetry, he penned a number of screenplays for Marcel Carné, the most famous being the film, Les Enfants du Paradis (The Children of Paradise). The poem ‘Barbara’ was included in the poetry collection Paroles (Words) which appeared in 1946. The poem itself is a denunciation of war and the bombing of Brest between 1940 and 1944.

Dreaming with the inmates by Christijan Robert Broerse (c)

Заключённый (The Prisoner), 1878, Nikolai Alexandrovich Yaroshenko - Tretyakov Gallery

By fires, cross-legged
broken chairs
on the backs of shadows
I have my notebooks of
Slender fable

A few frayed dreams drip
From lips
As I tell my listeners
Tales and traumas
beyond bars and walls
with cracks of stars and former armour
This little lullaby lament
crackling by the
fire

To gaze out and up, to grip the fist
As I retell what happened before
having held a
babe raised before this, all this

Our island of years doesn’t
Float
We are in the sinking glance
Together
Spellcast and sweet
We nursed tears in the backrooms
Of our eyes
Shed them in shared showers,

We scratched sighs on our
Walls and made love to our
Remembered beds
watched but never guarded
Our wardens came and went
Like hopes on balloon strings
below raised heads.

But even now…

With the guards all gone
The fences remain
No knives to truly cut the grids, we remain

The world howls and speeds
On with fast starlight and struggle

We have food, piles of this
but no good drinks

my pen is this moment’s wine
to the page it sinks, while
the others their exercise, they build
their bodies for old age and a breaking
free we don’t know if we prefer

But we gather at sundown
we burn the files left behind
about us
we burn fables our Procrustean
life and lies

but with the dead, we bury.

My dreams are ocher with the
Croak of crickets in the heartbeat
Of the yard

My dreams are violent but violet, like theirs
My epics are long, spiced, pierced with memory
A hand on my shoulder
‘Tell me more’

And so I weave dreams like blankets,
Cobbled like shoes of old, so I live on, I trundle about
living this life, no one waits for me
My fantasies are pure in the unlived, yes,
They are the garden we are
Building over the dead

They are the well we are digging in the yard
A break in the fence
But a ‘not yet’ whispers through our bones and scars

Such beauty is about to grow.

"Dreaming with the inmates” was a poem I wrote in one sitting back in 2018. It came on in a rush, and I cannot safely say where the inspiration came from. I know in the last few years I’d been thinking philosophically about humanity, the idea that some people love their limitations. Having been through a serious illness, I encountered those individuals that seemingly protected themselves from getting better to hold onto the identity granted by disease. The images of abandoned prisoners proved to be quite fascinating and how in their midst, I figured, they would not only need a storyteller but a biographer as well to both comfort and take down the histories of these struggling souls.

The Children’s Hour

Starting from the top and going clockwise ‘Grave Alive’, ‘laughing Allegra’ and ‘Edith with golden hair’ - Print after a portrait by Thomas Buchanan Read used to illustrate Longfellow's ‘The Children’s Hour’.

Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study, I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret
O'er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Longfellow is a semi-forgotten figure in 19th century American literature. While readers today tend to seek out Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman for poetry, Longfellow was a titan in his time, and his poems, the most famous ‘Paul Revere’s Ride’ along with The Song of Hiawatha and Evangeline were praised by his peers and remain staples in the history of American lit. Longfellow was also the first American to translate Dante’s Divine Comedy into English. ‘The Children’s Hour’ shows the more bucolic and playful aspects of family life, an aspect rarely shown in his works. Perhaps there is a reason. Longfellow experienced some tragedy at the homestead: his first wife died due to miscarriage in 1835 while his second wife died from severe burns in 1848.

Poems to Live By - what lines of verse do you love and give your life purpose?

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