Listen to an excerpt from POWER FORWARD, written and read by Reggie Love.

POWER FORWARD Audiobook Excerpt

Poems evoking the experience of parting from loved ones.

Parting At St Pancras Station - Recording 2 - 12 March 15

Midsummer Night

You took a piece of my heart Wassyl, gladly it remains in your hands forever.

SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date: 
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; 
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; 
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.


My personal tribute to Wassyl Slipak - MIF Sonnet 18 by W. Shakespeare sung by Sonia Vilim

Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud
By John Donne (1572–1631)

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. 

Image:  Painting The Death of Procris by Piero di Cosimo cca 1495


Death, be not proud by John Donne read by Sonia Vilim

Today, it's been three months since the loss of a remarkable man gone to soon holding up a mirror to our frail society Wassyl #Slipak. I would like to honour his memory with the following words:

Taras Shevchenko, poem "Song" 
(Dumka "Teche voda v synje more")

The  waters  flow  down  to  the  sea
And  never  more  return;
A  Cossack  goes  to  seek  his  fortune,
—  Fortune  there  is  none.
The  Cossack  journeys  far  away
Where  dance  the  dark  blue  waves,  —
Like  them  the  Cossack’s  heart  is  dancing,
But thought  speaks  and  says:
“Where  do  you  journey,  without  asking?
To  whose  care  abandoned
Father,  and  your  dear  old  mother,
And  a  fair  young  maiden?
In  foreign  parts  the  folk  are  strange,
And  hard  to  live,  indeed,
Among them ;  — none  to  share  your  tears,
No  one  with  whom  to  speak”.
The  Cossack  sits  there  on  the further
Shore  —  the  blue  waves  dance.
He dreamed  that  he would find  good  fortune:
Sorrow  crossed  his  path.
And the cranes  fly  in  long  skeins
Towards  the  furtheh  shore.
The  Cossack  weeps  —  the  beaten  tracks
Are  overgrown  with  thorns.


Taras Shevchenko
"Dumka / "Teche voda v synje more""
(Думка/"Тече вода в синє море")
1838, S - Peterburg (С.- Петербург)

Translated by Vera Rich

Original publication:
Taras Shevchenko, “N. N. (Meni trynadtsiatyi mynalo…),”
Zibrannia tvoriv u 6 tomakh, Кyiv: Naukova dumka,
2003, p. 36–37.

Source:
Taras Shevchenko. Works. Volume 12. Shevchenko's poetry in translations.
Edited  by  Bolidan  Krawciw.  Printed by  Mykola Denysiuk Printing Company
Chicago,  Illinois  —  USA, 1963,  page 33

Image: Wassyl Slipak from the archive of Wassyl Slipak Foundation

Sonia Vilim recites the Poem Song "Teche voda v synje more" by Taras Shevchenko

I am an artist, writer and poet living in Winchelsea on the coast of East Sussex, England. 

Midsummer Night

PETER DAVEY

Recent comments

Arthur Turfa: Poetry

Related tracks