Prosodia Karim El Azhari

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by William Butler Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer’s Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim’s favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

And remember, tell beauty you think so.

Submarine Mountains by Cale Young Rice

Under the sea, which is their sky, they rise
To watery altitudes as vast as those
Of far Himalayan peaks impent in snows
And veils of cloud and sacred deep repose.
Under the sea, their flowing firmament,
More dark than any ray of sun can pierce,
The earthquake thrust them up with mighty tierce
And left them to be seen but by the eyes
Of awed imagination inward bent.

Their vegetation is the viscid ooze,
Whose mysteries are past belief or thought.
Creation seems around them devil-wrought,
Or by some cosmic urgence gone distraught.
Adown their precipices chill and dense
With the dank midnight creep or crawl or climb
Such tentacled and eyeless things of slime,
Such monster shapes as tempt us to accuse
Life of a miscreative impotence.

About their peaks the shark, their eagle, floats,
In the thick azure far beneath the air,
Or downward sweeps upon what prey may dare
Set forth from any silent weedy lair.
But one desire on all their slopes is found,
Desire of food, the awful hunger strife,
Yet here, it may be, was begun our life,
Here all the dreams on which our vision dotes
In unevolved obscurity were bound.

Too strange it is, too terrible! And yet
It matters not how we were wrought or whence
Life came to us with all its throb intense,
If in it is a Godly Immanence.
It matters not,—if haply we are more
Than creatures half-conceived by a blind force
That sweeps the universe in a chance course:
For only in Unmeaning Might is met
The intolerable thought none can ignore.

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer’s Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim’s favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

And remember, tell beauty you think so.

Passers-By by Carl Sandburg

Passers-by,
Out of your many faces
Flash memories to me
Now at the day end
Away from the sidewalks
Where your shoe soles traveled
And your voices rose and blent
To form the city’s afternoon roar
Hindering an old silence.

Passers-by,
I remember lean ones among you,
Throats in the clutch of a hope,
Lips written over with strivings,
Mouths that kiss only for love,
Records of great wishes slept with,
Held long
And prayed and toiled for:

Yes,
Written on
Your mouths
And your throats
I read them
When you passed by.

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer’s Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim’s favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

And remember, tell beauty you think so.

Serenity by Edward Rowland Sill

Brook,
Be still,—be still!
Midnight’s arch is broken
In thy ceaseless ripples.
Dark and cold below them
Runs the troubled water,—
Only on its bosom,
Shimmering and trembling,
Doth the glinted star-shine
Sparkle and cease.

Life,
Be still,—be still!
Boundless truth is shattered
On thy hurrying current.
Rest, with face uplifted,
Calm, serenely quiet;
Drink the deathless beauty—
Thrills of love and wonder
Sinking, shining, star-like;
Till the mirrored heaven
Hollow down within thee
Holy deeps unfathomed,
Where far thoughts go floating,
And low voices wander
Whispering peace.

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer’s Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim’s favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

And remember, tell beauty you think so.

The Wild Common by D.H. Lawrence

The quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,
Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;
Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping:
They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim.

Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie
Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick.
Are they asleep?—Are they alive?—Now see, when I
Move my arms the hill bursts and heaves under their spurting kick.

The common flaunts bravely: but below, from the rushes
Crowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge the blossoming bushes;
There the lazy streamlet pushes
Its curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps, laughs, and gushes.

Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip,
Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the brook ebbing through so slow,
Naked on the steep, soft lip
Of the bank I stand watching my own white shadow quivering to and fro.

What if the gorse flowers shriveled and kissing were lost?
Without the pulsing waters, where were the marigolds and the songs of the brook?
If my veins and my breasts with love embossed
Withered, my insolent soul would be gone like flowers that the hot wind took.

So my soul like a passionate woman turns,
Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned, and her love
For myself in my own eyes’ laughter burns,
Runs ecstatic over the pliant folds rippling down to my belly from the breast-lights above.

Over my sunlit skin the warm, clinging air,
Rich with the songs of seven larks singing at once, goes kissing me glad.
And the soul of the wind and my blood compare
Their wandering happiness, and the wind, wasted in liberty, drifts on and is sad.

Oh but the water loves me and folds me,
Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me as though it were living blood,
Blood of a heaving woman who holds me,
Owning my supple body a rare glad thing, supremely good.

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer’s Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim’s favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

And remember, tell beauty you think so.

The Grass Beneath My Head by FS Flint

The grass is beneath my head;
and I gaze
at the thronging stars
in the night.

They fall… they fall…
I am overwhelmed,
and afraid.

Each leaf of the aspen
is caressed by the wind,
and each is crying.

And the perfume
of invisible roses
deepens the anguish.

Let a strong mesh of roots
feed the crimson of roses
upon my heart;
and then fold over the hollow
where all the pain was.

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Prosodia is a daily podcast dedicated to historical notes and poems, hosted by Karim El Azhari. Welcome!

All show notes are heavily recycled from old The Writer’s Almanac archives. May that podcast rest in peace (it was Karim’s favorite).

All poems are public domain or submitted by the author for use on the show.

Intro and outro music by Chillhop Records. They are amazing!

And remember, tell beauty you think so.