Rabindranath Tagore (Written in Bengali on December 31, 1899) THE LAST SUN of the century sets amidst the blood-red clouds of the West and the whirlwind of hatred. The naked passion of self-love of Nations, in its drunken delirium of greed, is dancing to the clash of steel and the howling verses of vengeance. The… Read More Sunset of the Century
NB: There are three kinds of wrongdoing: mistakes; crimes; and sins. Mistakes can be corrected, crimes may be punished; but for a sin, you can only repent: These lines are taken from the 1987 Georgian Soviet film Repentance, by Tengiz Abuladze. The American-backed Israeli Defence Forces call themselves the most moral army in the world. Their… Read More Daughter of prominent Palestinian poet killed in Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Khuda Hafiz
GAZA casualties live statistics On December 7, the beloved Palestinian poet, writer, literature professor, and activist Refaat Alareer was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike that also killed his brother, his sister, and four of her children. In the week of mourning since, tributes to Alareer’s life, writing, mentorship, and activism have flooded in from around the… Read More Watch Brian Cox read ‘If I Must Die’ by murdered Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer
First posted December 04, 2011 Reading HamletTo the right, wasteland by the cemeterybeyond it the river’s dull blue.You said: ‘Go, get thee, to a nunneryor get a fool to marry you…’ Though that’s always how Princes speak,still, I’ve remembered the words.As an ermine mantle let them stream,behind him, through endless years. ‘Hands clasped under the… Read More Anna Akhmatova: Three poems including ‘Requiem’ / Friendship in the time of terror: Nadezhda Mandelstam’s tribute to Akhmatova
By Graciela Mochkofsky It may come as no surprise that a country as deeply polarized by its recent history as Chile is also at war over the relevance of its preëminent poet, Pablo Neruda. In December, fifty years after the coup d’état that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, Chileans rejected an attempt to write a new constitution… Read More Black thread in the brightness: the second death of Pablo Neruda
NB: This is the simplest and most brilliant philosophical reflection on time I have heard. Here is Javed Akhtar’s own explanation of it at the Kolkata Literary Festival, 2022; and here is one of his recent recitals, at the Faiz Festival in 2018. It begins around 4.30 minutes into the video. Javed sahib shukriya. DS… Read More Javed Akhtar recites Waqt, his poem on Time
उड जायेगा हंस अकेलाजग दर्शन का मेला ।।Kumar Gandharva – Ud Jayega Song: Ud jayega hans akela jag darshan ka mela.. Lyrics with English translation Singer And Composer: Pandit Kumar Gandharva (1924- 1992) Dewas (M.P) India LYRICS :-Ud Jayega Huns Akela,Jug Darshan Ka MelaJaise Paat Gire Taruvar Se,Milna Bahut DuhelaNaa Jane Kidhar Girega,Lageya Pawan Ka… Read More उड जायेगा हंस अकेला / जग दर्शन का मेला – Remembering Mahatma Gandhi
First posted June 30, 2015 The Old Astronomer to His Pupil Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet,When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet;He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of howWe are working to completion, working on from then to… Read More The Old Astronomer to His Pupil / Stunning New Footage Of Earth
Before me there was no time, after me there will be none With me it is born, with me it will die Daniel von Czepko, Sexcenta Monidisticha Sapientum III, II (1655) the feeble artifice of an Argentine adrift on a sea of metaphysics . . . A word on the title: I am not unaware… Read More J. L. Borges: A New Refutation of Time
NB: For all those who think violence will put an end to violence; and that it’s not their problem anyway Are You Still Alive picture yourselfthe best way you canput it onlineand live up to it never weakeverything goes welland no alarmseverything to keep the dream alive nothing ever brings you downit is not your… Read More The Bony King of Nowhere – Are You Still Alive
After the truth-shower 