If you missed this excellent programme … then it is well worth watching
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00kpv23/Michael_Wood_on_Beowulf/
Archive for February, 2013
*Just finished reading John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row – wonderful, wonderful piece of writing – and in it he included verses from Black Marigolds, a poem written in Sanskrit by young Brahman poet Chauras about nineteen hundred years ago shortly before his execution for loving the king’s daughter. Here are a couple of verses and here’s a link if you want to read the whole thing http://www.wenaus.com/poetry/blkmar-full.html
Even now
I mind that I loved cypress and roses, clear,
The great blue mountains and the small grey hills,
The sounding of the sea. Upon a day
I saw strange eyes and hand like butterflies;
For me at morning larks flew from the thyme
And children came to bathe in little streams.
Even now
I know that I have savoured the hot taste of life
Lifting green cups and gold at the great feast.
Just for a small and forgotten time
I have had full in my eyes from off my girl
The whitest pouring of eternal light
Thunderheads sucked out of today
by the setting sun.
Aerial icebergs.
Silent lands.
Searching for new horizons
welshstream 