Poetry for the masses

I have been blogging daily photos of Canberra for a few months now, as part of a worldwide project of City Daily Photo blogs which has been running for over five years. Every day I wander through some of my favourite places through the eyes of photographers living in them, and one in particular caught my attention this morning.

London Daily Photo featured a shot of one of the Poems on the Underground, a series which has been running for 25 years. The poems are placed inside the trains, in the spaces that normally contain advertising, and are a wonderful opportunity to read something you might not otherwise be exposed to. I saw a number of these on our trip last year, but had no idea the series had been running so long.

The poem on London Daily Photo today is Ourstory, by Carole Satyamurti.

Ourstory

Let us now praise women
with feet glass slippers wouldn’t fit;

not the patient, nor even the embittered
ones who kept their place,

but awkward women, tenacious with truth,
whose elbows disposed of the impossible;

who split seams, who wouldn’t wait,
take no, take sedatives;

who sang their own numbers, went uninsured,
Knew best what they were missing.

Our misfit foremothers are joining forces
underground, their dusts mingling

breast-bone with scapula, forehead
with forehead. Their steady mass

bursts locks; lends a springing foot
to our vaulting into enormous rooms.

Remember

My seven year old son
wrote a note in the kitchen:
'Rember to be good for the rest of my life'
and signed his name.
My nine year old daughter
corrected his spelling
but sometimes the spelling doesn't matter.

travel haiku

Inspired by this article ...

October we leave -
Less than three months to Europe.
Need to win lotto!

the flea

For some reason, this poem came into my head this evening. I first read it in high school, and it's remained a favourite for many years.

-------------------

The Flea

by John Donne

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is;

Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;

Thou know’st that this cannot be said

A sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead,

    Yet this enjoys before it woo,

    And pampered swells with one blood made of two,

    And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, nay more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our mariage bed and mariage temple is;

Though parents grudge, and you, we are met,

And cloisterd in these living walls of jet.

    Though use make you apt to kill me,

    Let not to that, self-murder added be,

    And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?

Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou

Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;

    ’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:

    Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,

    Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.