This poem is taken from PN Review 171, Volume 33 Number 1, September - October 2006.

Common Prayer

Fiona Sampson


                     What is all this juice and all this joy?
                                     Gerard Manley Hopkins

 Twigs of young willow
                                        sough,
 a grave elastic bounce,
 in today's long-drawn-out Westerly;
 an oceanic roar blowing
 since the start of something else, far away,

 carrying language you hear
 but can't grasp:
                             struggle and give,
 the revelation of scale
 as it moves through the local –

 wind bobbing the dead grasses of the paddock

 a trace
               of the global, the rim
...
Searching, please wait...