Soothing Stanzas - Gentle Verses for Quiet Nights

Two poets spend an evening waiting — away from their love, in darkness, in silence, in a private inventory of yes and no — Linda Gregg and Adam Zagajewski, on Soothing Stanzas, Season 2: Love Unrequited.New York Address by Linda GreggThe sun had just gone outand I was walking three miles to get home.I wanted to die.I couldn’t think of words and I had no futureand I was coming down hard on everything.My walk was terrible.I didn’t seem to have a heart at alland my whole past seemed filled up.So I started answering all the questionsregardless of consequence:Yes I hate dark. No I love light. Yes I won’t speak.No I will write. Yes I will breed. No I won’t love.Yes I will bless. No I won’t close. Yes I won’t give.Love is on the other side of the lake.It is painful because the dark makes you hearthe water more. I accept all that.And that we are not allowed romance but only its distance.Having finished with it all, now I am not listening.I wait for the silence to resume.Transformation by Adam Zagajewski(translated by Clare Cavanagh)I haven’t written a single poemin months.I’ve lived humbly, reading the paper,pondering the riddle of powerand the reasons for obedience.I’ve watched sunsets(crimson, anxious),I’ve heard the birds grow quietand night’s muteness.I’ve seen sunflowers danglingtheir heads at dusk, as if a careless hangmanhad gone strolling through the gardens.September’s sweet dust gatheredon the windowsill and lizardshid in the bends of walls.I’ve taken long walks,craving one thing only:lightning,transformation,you.

A folk spell for keeping someone who's already gone, and a renunciation of love itself for something larger. Stephen Dunn and Faiz Ahmed Faiz on the different ways devotion gets withheld. Lovers by Stephen DunnTo keep the one you want dig up a footprint of hers and put it in a flowerpot. Then plant a marigold, the flower that doesn't fade. And love her. If she's distant now it's for a reason beyond control. So don't tamper with the impressions left by her body when for the last time she leaves your bed. Just smooth them out and forget her. Who is not vulnerable to a stronger magic (the broken glass, the bullets in a yawn), the terrible power of the one less in love.Do not ask me for that love again by Faiz Ahmed FaizThat which then was ours, my love,don’t ask me for that love again.The world then was gold, burnished with light –and only because of you. That’s what I had believed.How could one weep for sorrows other than yours?How could one have any sorrow but the one you gave?So what were these protests, these rumours of injustice?A glimpse of your face was evidence of springtime.The sky, whenever I looked, was nothing but your eyes.If you’d fall into my arms, Fate would be helpless.All this I’d thought, all this I’d believed.But there were other sorrows, comforts other than love.The rich had cast their spell on history:dark centuries had been embroidered on brocades and silks.Bitter threads began to unravel before meas I went into alleys and in open marketssaw bodies plastered with ash, bathed in blood.I saw them sold and bought, again and again.This too deserves attention. I can’t help but look backwhen I return from those alleys – what should one do?And you are still so ravishing – what should I do?There are other sorrows in this world,comforts other than love.Don’t ask me, my love, for that love again.

In this episode we have two poems - lovers far away, pining - one which offers everything and asks for nothing. The other has almost nothing left to give - a few words. Margaret Atwood and Jeffrey McDaniel on Soothing Stanzas, Season 2: Love Unrequited.Variation on the Word Sleep by Margaret AtwoodI would like to watch you sleeping,which may not happen.I would like to watch you,sleeping. I would like to sleepwith you, to enteryour sleep as its smooth dark waveslides over my headand walk with you through that lucentwavering forest of blue green leaveswith its watery sun & three moonstowards the cave where you must descend,towards your worst fearI would like to give you the silverbranch, the small white flower, the oneword that will protect youfrom the grief at the centerof your dream, from the griefat the center. I would like to followyou up the long stairwayagain & becomethe boat that would row you backcarefully, a flamein two cupped handsto where your body liesbeside me, and you enterit as easily as breathing inI would like to be the airthat inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed& that necessary.The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDanielIn an effort to get people to lookinto each other’s eyes more,and also to appease the mutes,the government has decidedto allot each person exactly one hundred   and sixty-seven words, per day.When the phone rings, I put it to my ear   without saying hello. In the restaurant   I point at chicken noodle soup.I am adjusting well to the new way.Late at night, I call my long distance lover,   proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.   I saved the rest for you.When she doesn’t respond,I know she’s used up all her words,   so I slowly whisper I love youthirty-two and a third times.After that, we just sit on the line   and listen to each other breathe.

Friendzoned? Yup - you didn't crash — you were handed a parachute and it was a soft landing. Here are two poets - Julian Brolaski and Mirza Ghalib - five centuries apart, on what it's like once you touch down in the friendzone. What to Say Upon Being Asked to Be FriendsBy Julian T. BrolaskiWhy speak of hate, when I do bleed for love?Not hate, my love, but Love doth bite my tongueTill I taste stuff that makes my rhyming roughSo flatter I my fever for the oneFor whom I inly mourn, though seem to shun.A rose is arrows is eros, so whatIf I confuse the shade that I’ve becomeWith winedark substance in a lover’s cup?But stop my tonguely wound, I’ve bled enough.If I be fair, or false, or freaked with fearIf I my tongue in lockèd box immureBlame not me, for I am sick with love.Yet would I be your friend most willinglySince friendship would infect me killingly.and the ghazal...No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved.... by Mirza Ghalib No, I wasn't meant to love and be loved If I’d lived longer, I would have waited longer. Knowing you are faithless keeps me alive and hungry. Knowing you faithful would kill me with joy. Delicate are you, and your vows are delicate, too, so easily do they break. You are a laconic marksman. You leave me not dead but perpetually dying. I want my friends to heal me, succor me. Instead, I get analysis. Conflagrations that would make stones drip blood are campfires compared to my anguish. Two-headed, inescapable anguish!—Love’s anguish or the anguish of time. Another dark, severing, incommunicable night. Death would be fine, if I only died once. I would have liked a solitary death, not this lavish funeral, this grave anyone can visit. You are mystical, Ghalib, and, also, you speak beautifully. Are you a saint, or just drunk as usual?

Every love starts with a spark. Few stay magical forever. Poets Lang Leav and Tishani Doshi trace the beginning, the middle, and the end — sometimes one-sided, sometimes over before it's ready to be. Three Questions - Lang Leav“What was it like to love him? Asked Gratitude.It was like being exhumed, I answered, and brought to life in a flash of brilliance.What was it like to be loved in return? Asked Joy.It was like being seen after a perpetual darkness, I replied. To be heard after a lifetime of silence.What was it like to lose him? Asked Sorrow. There was a long pause before I responded:It was like hearing every goodbye ever said to me—said all at once.”Love Poem - Tishani DoshiUltimately, we will lose each otherto something. I would hope for grandcircumstance — death or disaster.But it might not be that way at all.It might be that you walk outone morning after making loveto buy cigarettes, and never return,or I fall in love with another man.It might be a slow drift into indifference.Either way, we’ll have to learnto bear the weight of the eventualitythat we will lose each other to something.So why not begin now, while your headrests like a perfect moon in my lap,and the dogs on the beach are howling?Why not reach for the seam in this South Indiannight and tear it, just a little, so the fallingcan begin? Because later, when we crosseach other on the streets, and are forcedto look away, when we’ve thrownthe disregarded pieces of our togethernessinto bedroom drawers and the smellof our bodies is disappearing like the sweetdecay of lilies — what will we call it,when it’s no longer love?

A room built and offered, a room that refuses to fill — two poets on the same ache of longing. Brionne Janae and Charles Bukowski, back to back, on Soothing Stanzas, Season 2: Love Unrequited.The Heart - Brionne Janaehas many rooms doors that open doors that don't. still a lock to pick a key to find or borrow or have carved by the right smith some doors only open when another shuts some never open the locks red with rust and glazed with spider's web sometimes I think I want no doors only arches or windows you have to scramble through when no one's watching you might think it was but it's not a storage space neither holding cell nor jail you have to let the light come and go as it pleases the heart can't be bought or owned it's terribly difficult but not impossible to lose sweet friend I found a room inside my heart I think could suit you a place I hope you will return you can turn the fire on or leave it cool you can shut the shades or leave them open write your poems on the wall or only lie on the floor dreaming No help for that - Charles Bukowski"there is a place in the heart thatwill never be filleda spaceand even during thebest momentsand the greatest timestimeswe will know itwe will know itmore thaneverthere is a place in the heart thatwill never be filledandwe will waitandwaitin that space."

What does it feel like to want someone who doesn't really care much about you? In this Season Two opener, we read two poems that ache in different ways — Vikram Seth's "All You Who Sleep Tonight," a quiet, communal address to everyone lying awake missing someone, and Camonghne Felix's "Then, A Longing," a raw, interior poem about desire as a kind of theft. Two poets and one common ache we've all carried a...... Welcome to Soothing Stanzas Season Two : Love, Unrequited...All you who sleep tonight - Vikram SethFar from the ones you love,No hands to left or right,And emptiness above –Know that you aren’t alone.The whole world shares your tears,Some for two nights or one,And some for all their years.Then, A Longing - Camonghne FelixMy heart is the son of my body and it wants you.Do you know how much that aches? Like a salt bathfor the blistered. Like a cold that haunts the bone.It betrays me and I kneel to it; wouldn’t you call thata kind of theft? A kind of breaking-in? In any unspokenlanguage, shame is a palindrome that riddles me:through the holes, a blue moon whistles nearby,me and all your untouched desires gathering. At nightevery bell is your voice ringing my name. I am alreadywillingly of you, ungainly with consent. May I touchthe clouds of your chest with my fingers? Am I fatedto be the lover who begs?

When a 12th-century painter learned her husband was considering a second wife, she didn't argue — instead, she wrote a poem about clay, earth and fire. Guan Daosheng's poem - Song of me and you (also called "Married Love") is a 700-year-old meditation on what it means to become inseparable from another person, made from the simplest material imaginable. In under 7 minutes: one love, one poem... captured in a quiet, extraordinary piece from ancient China.Song of me and you - Guan DaoshengYou and IHave so much love,That itBurns like a fire,In which we bake a lump of clay. Molded into a figure of you,And a figure of me.Then we take both of them,And break them into pieces,And mix the pieces with water,And mold again a figure of you,And a figure of me.Now I am in youAs much as you are in me. In life we share a single quilt.In death we will share a single coffin. ....

What do you do with love when your beloved isn't in the room? Kabir — the fifteenth-century weaver-poet answers with his own loom: weave their name into everything. Into ten thousand threads, into the day's work, into the long ordinary hours of waiting.In this episode, we hear Kabir's tender poem of devotion in absence — a love song for anyone who has ever knitted a shawl, or kneaded dough before dawn. And in closing, we follow the thread to where Kabir was really pointing: a love that makes no distinction between the beloved across the table and the Beloved behind the universe. A poem about how everything you do can be done for love.The Loom of My Mind: Kabir On the loom of my mind, I weave Your name,To make a garment for you come to me.My loom has ten thousand threads,And weaves a soul’s robe for You and only youThe Sun and Moon silently watch as I weave Your name;The Sun and Moon silently listen  as I count Your name.This is my wage, for all my labor of day and the night,This wage deposited  in the blooming lotus bank of my heart.On the loom of my mind,  I weave Your name.As I wash these ten thousand threads of my thoughts, making them soft and clean,As I comb the tangled to release my clinging desires.And no more do I weave a garment of pain...For you have come to meOn the loom of my mind, I weave Your name....

A Nobel Prize-winning poet who survived Soviet hard labour and Arctic exile sits down and writes the funniest love poem a Nobel Laureate may have ever written. A series of increasingly absurd hypotheticals — what he would do if she were drowning, a bird, Chinese, a mirror, a volcano — each one more devoted and more ridiculous than the last. And then the final couplet disguised as a punchline. Love Song by Joseph BrodskyIf you were drowning, I'd come to the rescue, wrap you in my blanket and pour hot tea. If I were a sheriff, I'd arrest you and keep you in the cell under lock and key.If you were a bird, I'd cut a record and listen all night long to your high-pitched trill. If I were a sergeant, you'd be my recruit, and boy I can assure you you'd love the drill.If you were Chinese, I'd learn the language, burn a lot of incense, wear funny clothes. If you were a mirror, I'd storm the Ladies, give you my red lipstick and puff your nose.If you loved volcanoes, I'd be lava relentlessly erupting from my hidden source. And if you were my wife, I'd be your lover because the church is firmly against divorce.XXX

A Yorkshire poet makes a patient, slightly exasperated, entirely heartfelt case against his partner's diet. He has read the books. He has jogged alongside her. He has eaten the 'cardboard' called crispbread. And now he wants to go on record: enough. In ten lines of warm domestic comedy, Morrison arrives at one of the simplest and most beautiful declarations. Just six words at the end that say everything love should say — I want not less but more of you.

Two short poems — read together in a single episode. The first - An Exercise in Love by Diane di Prima builds a world of quiet, sensory intimacy: moonstones and seaweeds, silk and herons the colour of dawn, love as a daily practice of exchange so deep that by the final line she has woken in the smell of his hair and cannot remember her own name. The second simply called Love Poem by Vicki Feaver catches the same love in a single, unguarded moment. Together they make one of the most tender portraits of love you will find anywhere in the American tradition.

What if you have loved this person before — in other lifetimes, other ages, other forms — and simply recognise them again? That is the question at the heart of this extraordinary poem by the Nobel laureate Tagore, written in Bengal in 1890 and still impossible to read without choking up. Not a love poem about passion. A love poem about souls.Eternal Love - by Rabindranath TagoreI may have loved you in many forms, many times, life after life, age after age, forever. Now my soul spins these words to adorn you with a garland of my lovesong And you accept this gift, joyously - and wear in your many forms.life after life, in age after age, forever.When I hear about the agonies of love lost, I turn to look back into the past, And from this night, you emerge, a bright-star in the darkness of time: An image of what I remembered forever.You and I have floated here on this stream of love, alongside millions of lovers, sharing the same sweetness of our first meeting, the same distressful tears of our farewell — Our love so old is but a timeless love, it renews and renews forever.Today all of it is here, in its full glory - heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you. The memories of all the loves of the past become one with this love of ours with the songs of every poet, now and forever.XXX

Most love poems give you roses. This one gives you WD40 - a rust remover. In seventeen quietly devastating lines, Fanthorpe makes the case that the most heroic love is the kind that shows up, checks the insurance, laughs at your terrible jokes, and holds the whole rickety structure of your life - holds it up with pride. Like Atlas held the sky. A gentle paean for the responsible lovers....Atlas by U.A. Fanthorpe There is a kind of love called maintenance Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it; Which checks the insurance, and doesn't forget the milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs; Which answers letters; which knows the way the money goes; which deals with dentists and Road Fund Tax and meeting trains, And postcards to the lonely; which upholds the permanently rickety elaborate structures of living, which is Atlas.And maintenance is the sensible side of love, Which knows – what time and weather are doing –  to my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring; laughs at my dry rotten jokes; remembers my need for gloss and grouting; which keeps my suspect edifice upright in air, As Atlas did the sky.

A love poem for a warming world — borrowed from Neruda, rewritten for now. Craig Santos Perez takes the shape of Neruda's Sonnet XVII and fills it with rare earth metals, vanishing species, and rising seas — a love that can no longer pretend to exist outside the planet it's on. Sit with "Love in a Time of Climate Change," and hear what tenderness sounds like when our average temperatures are going up....Love in a Time of Climate Change by Craig Santoz Perezrecycling Pablo Nerudas "Sonnet XVII"I don't love you as if you were rare earth metals, conflict diamonds, or reserves of crude oil that cause war. I love you as one loves the most vulnerable species: urgently, between the habitat and its loss.I love you as one loves the last seed saved within a vault, gestating the heritage of our roots, and thanks to your body, the taste that ripens from its fruit still lives sweetly on my tongue.I love you without knowing how or when this world will end. I love you organically, without pesticides.I love you like this because we'll only survivein the nitrogen rich compost of our embrace, so close that your emissions of carbon are mine, so close that your sea rises with my heat....

He begins by telling us what this love is not. Not roses. Not fire. Not any of the bright, showy things love is usually compared to. Instead Pablo Neruda reaches downward — into soil, shadow, and secret. Into a love so deep it has no name for itself, no origin, no explanation. And then, in the final lines, the border between two loves vanishes. Sonnet XVII (I do not love you...) by Pablo NerudaI do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,in secret, between the shadow and the soul.I love you as the plant that never bloomsbut carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;so I love you because I know no other waythan this: where I does not exist, nor you,so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

This Love — Ancient Egypt, circa 1200 BCThree thousand years before anyone wrote a sonnet, an anonymous Egyptian poet picked up a reed pen and tried to say what love feels like from the inside. And he started with our most basic human needs - food, and then goes on to better things of life.The result is one of the oldest love poems in existence, and one of the most quietly beautiful. It doesn't reach for the heavens or the eternal. It reaches for oil and honey, for linen and bread, for the small seal-ring on a finger. It says: this love is woven through everything sustaining and ordinary and good. And then, in its final lines, it makes a promise so simple it stops you cold — that all the days ahead will be food set before us. Dates and honey, bread and wine.In this episode we read and explore this remarkable poem — a voice from 1200 BC that sounds, in the best possible way, like someone you know.This LoveThis love is as goodas oil and honey to the throat,as linen to the body,as fine garments to the gods,as incense to the worshipperswhen they enter in,as the little seal-ringto my finger.It is like a ripe pearin a man's hand,it is like the dateswe mix with wine,it is like the seedsthe baker adds to bread.We will be togethereven when old age comes.And all the days in betweenwill be food set before us,dates and honey, bread and wine.Translated by Michael V. Fox, adapted by Robert Hass. Narration by Florentino Ariza