This poem is taken from PN Review 232, Volume 43 Number 2, November - December 2016.
‘The People on the Lawn’ & Other Poems
The People on the Lawn
The people on the lawn
Were invisible weren’t on
First-name terms with the dead
Waved maniacally at passing cars
Said their goodbyes by postal ballot
Nodded at the thinning poet
Made their own darkness
Were uninterested in the light from Liébana
Fished in their youth
Won countless Petrarchan laurels
Woke themselves from piss-poor dreams
Suffered from chronic distraction
Never knew what they’d missed
Owned a blind telescope
Slipped into mythology
...
The people on the lawn
Were invisible weren’t on
First-name terms with the dead
Waved maniacally at passing cars
Said their goodbyes by postal ballot
Nodded at the thinning poet
Made their own darkness
Were uninterested in the light from Liébana
Fished in their youth
Won countless Petrarchan laurels
Woke themselves from piss-poor dreams
Suffered from chronic distraction
Never knew what they’d missed
Owned a blind telescope
Slipped into mythology
...
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