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This poem is taken from PN Review 250, Volume 46 Number 2, November - December 2019.

True Vine Andrew Wynn Owen
My God, how I these studies prize,
That do thy hidden workings show!
            Whose sum is such
            No sum so much:
Nay, summed as sand they sumless grow.
I lie to sleep, from sleep I rise,
Yet still in thought with thee I go.
— Mary Sidney Herbert, ‘Psalm 139’

‘One should never go to God, as it were “on purpose”’
— Leo Tolstoy, ‘Thoughts on God’ (1900), trans. Vladimir Tchertkoff


1. VINE
The infinite is intricate, a vine
            That wanders and rewinds,
      An inexplicable design,
            One of those marvellous finds
That never disappoint, degenerate,
      Or fail to satisfy the mind’s
Demand for narratives commensurate
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