Culture

New York City's terrific Poetry In Motion program places poem-placards in the spaces usually reserved for advertisements in subway cars and buses. Perhaps this is a worthy idea for India's unruly public transport system!

Do check out ten years worth of great poetry in motion.

Anyway, last night, this blogger was rushing from work to catch a movie -- subways are the fastest way around town in Gotham -- and caught Robert Hayden's classic Those Winter Sundays on the subway wall.

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

Reminded us of this magnificent effort linked on India Uncut.

Great stuff, indeed.