https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/soothing-stanzas-gentle-verses-for-quiet-nights--7155168enArtsCopyright Florentino Arizahttps://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/14aa7665591b8e93ffac0b34d1e87f39.jpghttps://www.spreaker.com/podcast/soothing-stanzas-gentle-verses-for-quiet-nights--7155168Fri, 21 Aug 2026 18:23:46 +0000Florentino ArizaFlorentino Arizafeeds@spreaker.comEach episode of Soothing Stanzas offers a single poem — from a lovestruck scribe in ancient Egypt to Pablo Neruda, Tagore. Poets from the ages and here and now — savored slowly, with warmth and full attention. Together we'll sit with its wisdom, its...false374dfd0b-802f-57a0-8a5c-f656258696deepisodichttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/friend-zoned-two-poems-to-soothe-you--74472114What to Say Upon Being Asked to Be FriendsBy Julian T. BrolaskiWhy speak of hate, when I do bleed for love?Not hate, my love, but Love doth bite my tongueTill I taste stuff that makes my rhyming roughSo flatter I my fever for the oneFor whom I inly mourn, though seem to shun.A rose is arrows is eros, so whatIf I confuse the shade that I’ve becomeWith winedark substance in a lover’s cup?But stop my tonguely wound, I’ve bled enough.If I be fair, or false, or freaked with fearIf I my tongue in lockèd box immureBlame not me, for I am sick with love.Yet would I be your friend most willinglySince friendship would infect me killingly.
and the ghazal...
No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved.... by Mirza Ghalib
No, I wasn't meant to love and be loved If I’d lived longer, I would have waited longer. Knowing you are faithless keeps me alive and hungry. Knowing you faithful would kill me with joy. Delicate are you, and your vows are delicate, too, so easily do they break. You are a laconic marksman. You leave me not dead but perpetually dying. I want my friends to heal me, succor me. Instead, I get analysis. Conflagrations that would make stones drip blood are campfires compared to my anguish. Two-headed, inescapable anguish!—Love’s anguish or the anguish of time. Another dark, severing, incommunicable night. Death would be fine, if I only died once. I would have liked a solitary death, not this lavish funeral, this grave anyone can visit. You are mystical, Ghalib, and, also, you speak beautifully. Are you a saint, or just drunk as usual?
]]>5391cadf-4622-44db-bf63-41f0bf52e285Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:15:00 +0000Florentino ArizaFriendzoned? Yup - you didn't crash — you were handed a parachute and it was a soft landing. Here are two poets - Julian Brolaski and Mirza Ghalib - five centuries apart, on what it's like once you touch down in the friendzone. What to Say Upon Being...What to Say Upon Being Asked to Be FriendsBy Julian T. BrolaskiWhy speak of hate, when I do bleed for love?Not hate, my love, but Love doth bite my tongueTill I taste stuff that makes my rhyming roughSo flatter I my fever for the oneFor whom I inly mourn, though seem to shun.A rose is arrows is eros, so whatIf I confuse the shade that I’ve becomeWith winedark substance in a lover’s cup?But stop my tonguely wound, I’ve bled enough.If I be fair, or false, or freaked with fearIf I my tongue in lockèd box immureBlame not me, for I am sick with love.Yet would I be your friend most willinglySince friendship would infect me killingly.
and the ghazal...
No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved.... by Mirza Ghalib
No, I wasn't meant to love and be loved If I’d lived longer, I would have waited longer. Knowing you are faithless keeps me alive and hungry. Knowing you faithful would kill me with joy. Delicate are you, and your vows are delicate, too, so easily do they break. You are a laconic marksman. You leave me not dead but perpetually dying. I want my friends to heal me, succor me. Instead, I get analysis. Conflagrations that would make stones drip blood are campfires compared to my anguish. Two-headed, inescapable anguish!—Love’s anguish or the anguish of time. Another dark, severing, incommunicable night. Death would be fine, if I only died once. I would have liked a solitary death, not this lavish funeral, this grave anyone can visit. You are mystical, Ghalib, and, also, you speak beautifully. Are you a saint, or just drunk as usual?
]]>762false24fullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/losing-it-slowly-losing-it-all-at-once--73979821Three Questions - Lang Leav“What was it like to love him? Asked Gratitude.It was like being exhumed, I answered, and brought to life in a flash of brilliance.What was it like to be loved in return? Asked Joy.It was like being seen after a perpetual darkness, I replied. To be heard after a lifetime of silence.What was it like to lose him? Asked Sorrow. There was a long pause before I responded:It was like hearing every goodbye ever said to me—said all at once.”
Love Poem - Tishani DoshiUltimately, we will lose each otherto something. I would hope for grandcircumstance — death or disaster.But it might not be that way at all.It might be that you walk outone morning after making loveto buy cigarettes, and never return,or I fall in love with another man.It might be a slow drift into indifference.Either way, we’ll have to learnto bear the weight of the eventualitythat we will lose each other to something.So why not begin now, while your headrests like a perfect moon in my lap,and the dogs on the beach are howling?Why not reach for the seam in this South Indiannight and tear it, just a little, so the fallingcan begin? Because later, when we crosseach other on the streets, and are forcedto look away, when we’ve thrownthe disregarded pieces of our togethernessinto bedroom drawers and the smellof our bodies is disappearing like the sweetdecay of lilies — what will we call it,when it’s no longer love?
]]>ded8cd31-a7e8-4629-9cdd-a8e8d214a8d0Fri, 14 Aug 2026 09:28:00 +0000Florentino ArizaEvery love starts with a spark. Few stay magical forever. Poets Lang Leav and Tishani Doshi trace the beginning, the middle, and the end — sometimes one-sided, sometimes over before it's ready to be. Three Questions - Lang Leav“What was it like to...Three Questions - Lang Leav“What was it like to love him? Asked Gratitude.It was like being exhumed, I answered, and brought to life in a flash of brilliance.What was it like to be loved in return? Asked Joy.It was like being seen after a perpetual darkness, I replied. To be heard after a lifetime of silence.What was it like to lose him? Asked Sorrow. There was a long pause before I responded:It was like hearing every goodbye ever said to me—said all at once.”
Love Poem - Tishani DoshiUltimately, we will lose each otherto something. I would hope for grandcircumstance — death or disaster.But it might not be that way at all.It might be that you walk outone morning after making loveto buy cigarettes, and never return,or I fall in love with another man.It might be a slow drift into indifference.Either way, we’ll have to learnto bear the weight of the eventualitythat we will lose each other to something.So why not begin now, while your headrests like a perfect moon in my lap,and the dogs on the beach are howling?Why not reach for the seam in this South Indiannight and tear it, just a little, so the fallingcan begin? Because later, when we crosseach other on the streets, and are forcedto look away, when we’ve thrownthe disregarded pieces of our togethernessinto bedroom drawers and the smellof our bodies is disappearing like the sweetdecay of lilies — what will we call it,when it’s no longer love?
]]>542false23fullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/the-empty-rooms-of-the-heart-two-poems--73609164The Heart - Brionne Janaehas many rooms doors that open doors that don't. still a lock to pick a key to find or borrow or have carved by the right smith some doors only open when another shuts some never open the locks red with rust and glazed with spider's web sometimes I think I want no doors only arches or windows you have to scramble through when no one's watching you might think it was but it's not a storage space neither holding cell nor jail you have to let the light come and go as it pleases the heart can't be bought or owned it's terribly difficult but not impossible to lose sweet friend I found a room inside my heart I think could suit you a place I hope you will return you can turn the fire on or leave it cool you can shut the shades or leave them open write your poems on the wall or only lie on the floor dreaming
No help for that - Charles Bukowski"there is a place in the heart thatwill never be filleda spaceand even during thebest momentsand the greatest timestimeswe will know itwe will know itmore thaneverthere is a place in the heart thatwill never be filledandwe will waitandwaitin that space."]]>3ba19545-71cc-4dd2-b749-2f3d95456a39Fri, 07 Aug 2026 08:47:00 +0000Florentino ArizaA room built and offered, a room that refuses to fill — two poets on the same ache of longing. Brionne Janae and Charles Bukowski, back to back, on Soothing Stanzas, Season 2: Love Unrequited. The Heart - Brionne Janaehas many rooms doors that open...The Heart - Brionne Janaehas many rooms doors that open doors that don't. still a lock to pick a key to find or borrow or have carved by the right smith some doors only open when another shuts some never open the locks red with rust and glazed with spider's web sometimes I think I want no doors only arches or windows you have to scramble through when no one's watching you might think it was but it's not a storage space neither holding cell nor jail you have to let the light come and go as it pleases the heart can't be bought or owned it's terribly difficult but not impossible to lose sweet friend I found a room inside my heart I think could suit you a place I hope you will return you can turn the fire on or leave it cool you can shut the shades or leave them open write your poems on the wall or only lie on the floor dreaming
No help for that - Charles Bukowski"there is a place in the heart thatwill never be filleda spaceand even during thebest momentsand the greatest timestimeswe will know itwe will know itmore thaneverthere is a place in the heart thatwill never be filledandwe will waitandwaitin that space."]]>449false22fullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/a-kind-of-theft-two-poems-and-a-common-ache--73280367
All you who sleep tonight - Vikram SethFar from the ones you love,No hands to left or right,And emptiness above –Know that you aren’t alone.The whole world shares your tears,Some for two nights or one,And some for all their years.

Then, A Longing - Camonghne FelixMy heart is the son of my body and it wants you.Do you know how much that aches? Like a salt bathfor the blistered. Like a cold that haunts the bone.It betrays me and I kneel to it; wouldn’t you call thata kind of theft? A kind of breaking-in? In any unspokenlanguage, shame is a palindrome that riddles me:through the holes, a blue moon whistles nearby,me and all your untouched desires gathering. At nightevery bell is your voice ringing my name. I am alreadywillingly of you, ungainly with consent. May I touchthe clouds of your chest with my fingers? Am I fatedto be the lover who begs?
]]>bc9b2f33-89a9-4175-8f8d-9ebcba5d734bFri, 31 Jul 2026 10:03:00 +0000Florentino ArizaWhat does it feel like to want someone who doesn't really care much about you? In this Season Two opener, we read two poems that ache in different ways — Vikram Seth's "All You Who Sleep Tonight," a quiet, communal address to everyone lying awake...
All you who sleep tonight - Vikram SethFar from the ones you love,No hands to left or right,And emptiness above –Know that you aren’t alone.The whole world shares your tears,Some for two nights or one,And some for all their years.

Then, A Longing - Camonghne FelixMy heart is the son of my body and it wants you.Do you know how much that aches? Like a salt bathfor the blistered. Like a cold that haunts the bone.It betrays me and I kneel to it; wouldn’t you call thata kind of theft? A kind of breaking-in? In any unspokenlanguage, shame is a palindrome that riddles me:through the holes, a blue moon whistles nearby,me and all your untouched desires gathering. At nightevery bell is your voice ringing my name. I am alreadywillingly of you, ungainly with consent. May I touchthe clouds of your chest with my fingers? Am I fatedto be the lover who begs?
]]>666false21fullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/song-of-me-and-you-a-poem-by-guan-daosheng--73141601Song of me and you - Guan Daosheng
You and IHave so much love,That itBurns like a fire,
In which we bake a lump of clay. Molded into a figure of you,And a figure of me.
Then we take both of them,And break them into pieces,And mix the pieces with water,And mold again
a figure of you,And a figure of me.
Now I am in youAs much as you are in me. In life we share a single quilt.In death we will share a single coffin. ....
]]>c0ed1133-3c92-437a-a5d7-ba552101bb1aFri, 24 Jul 2026 08:32:00 +0000Florentino ArizaWhen a 12th-century painter learned her husband was considering a second wife, she didn't argue — instead, she wrote a poem about clay, earth and fire. Guan Daosheng's poem - Song of me and you (also called "Married Love") is a 700-year-old meditation...Song of me and you - Guan Daosheng
You and IHave so much love,That itBurns like a fire,
In which we bake a lump of clay. Molded into a figure of you,And a figure of me.
Then we take both of them,And break them into pieces,And mix the pieces with water,And mold again
a figure of you,And a figure of me.
Now I am in youAs much as you are in me. In life we share a single quilt.In death we will share a single coffin. ....
]]>549false19fullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/the-loom-of-my-mind-a-poem-by-kabir--73032518The Loom of My Mind: Kabir On the loom of my mind, I weave Your name,To make a garment for you come to me.
My loom has ten thousand threads,And weaves a soul’s robe for You and only youThe Sun and Moon silently watch as I weave Your name;The Sun and Moon silently listen  as I count Your name.This is my wage, for all my labor of day and the night,This wage deposited  in the blooming lotus bank of my heart.On the loom of my mind,  I weave Your name.As I wash these ten thousand threads of my thoughts, making them soft and clean,As I comb the tangled to release my clinging desires.And no more do I weave a garment of pain...For you have come to me
On the loom of my mind, I weave Your name....
]]>c7b03a1b-642c-402a-abe5-58351aad6ddaFri, 17 Jul 2026 18:08:00 +0000Florentino ArizaWhat do you do with love when your beloved isn't in the room? Kabir — the fifteenth-century weaver-poet answers with his own loom: weave their name into everything. Into ten thousand threads, into the day's work, into the long ordinary hours of...The Loom of My Mind: Kabir On the loom of my mind, I weave Your name,To make a garment for you come to me.
My loom has ten thousand threads,And weaves a soul’s robe for You and only youThe Sun and Moon silently watch as I weave Your name;The Sun and Moon silently listen  as I count Your name.This is my wage, for all my labor of day and the night,This wage deposited  in the blooming lotus bank of my heart.On the loom of my mind,  I weave Your name.As I wash these ten thousand threads of my thoughts, making them soft and clean,As I comb the tangled to release my clinging desires.And no more do I weave a garment of pain...For you have come to me
On the loom of my mind, I weave Your name....
]]>597false18fullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/love-poem-joseph-brodsky--72911417Love Song by Joseph BrodskyIf you were drowning, I'd come to the rescue, wrap you in my blanket and pour hot tea. If I were a sheriff, I'd arrest you and keep you in the cell under lock and key.If you were a bird, I'd cut a record and listen all night long to your high-pitched trill. If I were a sergeant, you'd be my recruit, and boy I can assure you you'd love the drill.If you were Chinese, I'd learn the language, burn a lot of incense, wear funny clothes. If you were a mirror, I'd storm the Ladies, give you my red lipstick and puff your nose.If you loved volcanoes, I'd be lava relentlessly erupting from my hidden source. And if you were my wife, I'd be your lover because the church is firmly against divorce.
XXX

]]>d32461e2-c86c-4e9e-8062-2c16b526f357Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:19:00 +0000Florentino ArizaA Nobel Prize-winning poet who survived Soviet hard labour and Arctic exile sits down and writes the funniest love poem a Nobel Laureate may have ever written. A series of increasingly absurd hypotheticals — what he would do if she were drowning, a...Love Song by Joseph BrodskyIf you were drowning, I'd come to the rescue, wrap you in my blanket and pour hot tea. If I were a sheriff, I'd arrest you and keep you in the cell under lock and key.If you were a bird, I'd cut a record and listen all night long to your high-pitched trill. If I were a sergeant, you'd be my recruit, and boy I can assure you you'd love the drill.If you were Chinese, I'd learn the language, burn a lot of incense, wear funny clothes. If you were a mirror, I'd storm the Ladies, give you my red lipstick and puff your nose.If you loved volcanoes, I'd be lava relentlessly erupting from my hidden source. And if you were my wife, I'd be your lover because the church is firmly against divorce.
XXX

]]>527false17fullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/against-dieting-a-love-poem-by-blake-morrison--728278570aea9396-2b28-4c76-90e6-a4d0be879bf8Fri, 03 Jul 2026 08:59:00 +0000Florentino ArizaA Yorkshire poet makes a patient, slightly exasperated, entirely heartfelt case against his partner's diet. He has read the books. He has jogged alongside her. He has eaten the 'cardboard' called crispbread. And now he wants to go on record: enough....275false15fullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/two-love-poems-one-message--72827861ca6d6029-e266-4535-a673-73852103baa0Fri, 26 Jun 2026 08:33:00 +0000Florentino ArizaTwo short poems — read together in a single episode. The first - An Exercise in Love by Diane di Prima builds a world of quiet, sensory intimacy: moonstones and seaweeds, silk and herons the colour of dawn, love as a daily practice of exchange so deep...448false15fullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/eternal-love-a-poem-by-rabindranath-tagore--72827858Eternal Love - by Rabindranath TagoreI may have loved you in many forms, many times, life after life, age after age, forever. Now my soul spins these words to adorn you with a garland of my lovesong And you accept this gift, joyously - and wear in your many forms.life after life, in age after age, forever.
When I hear about the agonies of love lost, I turn to look back into the past, And from this night, you emerge, a bright-star in the darkness of time: An image of what I remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on this stream of love, alongside millions of lovers, sharing the same sweetness of our first meeting, the same distressful tears of our farewell — Our love so old is but a timeless love, it renews and renews forever.Today all of it is here, in its full glory - heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you. The memories of all the loves of the past become one with this love of ours with the songs of every poet, now and forever.XXX]]>e9cd1bfc-3105-4a38-a170-fc8968219b88Fri, 19 Jun 2026 10:11:00 +0000Florentino ArizaWhat if you have loved this person before — in other lifetimes, other ages, other forms — and simply recognise them again? That is the question at the heart of this extraordinary poem by the Nobel laureate Tagore, written in Bengal in 1890 and still...Eternal Love - by Rabindranath TagoreI may have loved you in many forms, many times, life after life, age after age, forever. Now my soul spins these words to adorn you with a garland of my lovesong And you accept this gift, joyously - and wear in your many forms.life after life, in age after age, forever.
When I hear about the agonies of love lost, I turn to look back into the past, And from this night, you emerge, a bright-star in the darkness of time: An image of what I remembered forever.
You and I have floated here on this stream of love, alongside millions of lovers, sharing the same sweetness of our first meeting, the same distressful tears of our farewell — Our love so old is but a timeless love, it renews and renews forever.Today all of it is here, in its full glory - heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you. The memories of all the loves of the past become one with this love of ours with the songs of every poet, now and forever.XXX]]>498false14fullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/atlas-a-poem-by-u-a-fanthorpe--72827859]]>a8bf3220-9243-4d38-9c5d-61b4305db7ddThu, 11 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000Florentino ArizaMost love poems give you roses. This one gives you WD40 - a rust remover. In seventeen quietly devastating lines, Fanthorpe makes the case that the most heroic love is the kind that shows up, checks the insurance, laughs at your terrible jokes, and...]]>373falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/love-in-the-time-of-climate-change-by-craig-santos-perez--72956032Love in a Time of Climate Change by Craig Santoz Perezrecycling Pablo Nerudas "Sonnet XVII"
I don't love you as if you were rare earth metals, conflict diamonds, or reserves of crude oil that cause war. I love you as one loves the most vulnerable species: urgently, between the habitat and its loss.I love you as one loves the last seed saved within a vault, gestating the heritage of our roots, and thanks to your body, the taste that ripens from its fruit still lives sweetly on my tongue.I love you without knowing how or when this world will end. I love you organically, without pesticides.I love you like this because we'll only survivein the nitrogen rich compost of our embrace, so close that your emissions of carbon are mine, so close that your sea rises with my heat....


]]>7928dc39-1df5-4912-ba6a-f14db7993564Sat, 06 Jun 2026 19:50:00 +0000Florentino ArizaA love poem for a warming world — borrowed from Neruda, rewritten for now. Craig Santos Perez takes the shape of Neruda's Sonnet XVII and fills it with rare earth metals, vanishing species, and rising seas — a love that can no longer pretend to exist...Love in a Time of Climate Change by Craig Santoz Perezrecycling Pablo Nerudas "Sonnet XVII"
I don't love you as if you were rare earth metals, conflict diamonds, or reserves of crude oil that cause war. I love you as one loves the most vulnerable species: urgently, between the habitat and its loss.I love you as one loves the last seed saved within a vault, gestating the heritage of our roots, and thanks to your body, the taste that ripens from its fruit still lives sweetly on my tongue.I love you without knowing how or when this world will end. I love you organically, without pesticides.I love you like this because we'll only survivein the nitrogen rich compost of our embrace, so close that your emissions of carbon are mine, so close that your sea rises with my heat....


]]>436false13fullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/i-do-not-love-you-a-sonnet-by-pablo-neruda--72827860Sonnet XVII (I do not love you...) by Pablo NerudaI do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,in secret, between the shadow and the soul.I love you as the plant that never bloomsbut carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;so I love you because I know no other waythan this: where I does not exist, nor you,so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
]]>2d2d3f8b-89dc-449a-8c98-569e22f27e0cFri, 05 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000Florentino ArizaHe begins by telling us what this love is not. Not roses. Not fire. Not any of the bright, showy things love is usually compared to. Instead Pablo Neruda reaches downward — into soil, shadow, and secret. Into a love so deep it has no name for itself,...Sonnet XVII (I do not love you...) by Pablo NerudaI do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,in secret, between the shadow and the soul.I love you as the plant that never bloomsbut carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;so I love you because I know no other waythan this: where I does not exist, nor you,so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
]]>295false12fullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/this-love-an-egyptian-poem-from-circa-1200-bc--72827862]]>ee965f60-caed-41b0-a72d-bf93ba845ab0Mon, 01 Jun 2026 04:28:50 +0000Florentino ArizaThis Love — Ancient Egypt, circa 1200 BCThree thousand years before anyone wrote a sonnet, an anonymous Egyptian poet picked up a reed pen and tried to say what love feels like from the inside. And he started with our most basic human needs - food,...]]>249false11full