This poem is taken from PN Review 140, Volume 27 Number 6, July - August 2001.

Two Poems

Jon Glover


The Function of Dreams

It was as good as climbing a hill, as though
(as though), frightened by boundaries, by all
the wars (stuff) about to be manifest
from the distant side. So that's it: distant,

the aggregations of splendour unexplained,
plaintive, translucent castles on the plain
just so, where you are lost, evaporating
alone on the far side. After, after -

fill it in with sticks, stones, cotton waste and
spit; cuckoo spit, grubby apparitions
(as though) a comic stand-in, stealing and
skewing and vain. Such strife and forgetting.


Door to an Enclosed Space

Not mist; not soft. Truly hard and stone-covered
and beneath my feet and above my eyes.
...
Searching, please wait...