Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

1. Kabir
   

Friend, 

You had one life, 

And you blew it. 

From sticky spunk 

To human shape, 

You spent ten months 

In your mother’s womb, 

Blocked off from the world 

Into which you fell 

The minute you were born. 

A child once, 

You’re an old man now. 

What has happened has happened. 

Crying won’t help 

When death already has you by the balls. 

It’s counting your breaths, 

Waiting. 

This world, says Kabir, 

Is a gambling den. 

You can’t be too careful. 

May the shuttered windows 

keep the air as cool as bottled jasmine. 

May you never forget to listen 

to the crumpled whisper of sheets 

that mould themselves to your sleeping form. 

May the pillows always be silvered 

with cat-down and the muted percussion 

of a lover’s breath. 

May the murmur of the wall clock 

continue to decree that your providence 

run ten minutes slow. 

May nothing be disturbed 

in the simplest place you know 

for it is here in the foetal hush 

that blueprints dissolve 

and poems begin,  

and faith spreads like the hum of crickets, 

faith in a time 

when maps shall fade, 

nostalgia cease 

and the vigil end.

2. Nirala

So, nothing worked out, and so what? 

The gods betrayed us. Do we weep over it? 

Everywhere, shadows and more shadows, 

And yet they showed us blue sky. 

You become less and become more, 

you go away and you return. 

When nothing could’ve happened, 

what could’ve happened? 

So, nothing worked out, and so what? 

You walk, and grow weary, 

you stop, and you whine. 

It’s the world’s fault. 

What can one say? 

What’s been washed clean, 

why scrub it again? 

So, nothing worked out, and so what?