Most Read... John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Joshua WeinerAn Exchange with Daniel Tiffany/Fall 2020
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Christopher MiddletonNotes on a Viking Prow
(PN Review 10)
Next Issue Sinead Morrissey 'The Lightbox' Philip Terry 'What is Poetry' Ned Denny 'Nine Poems after Verlaine' Sasha Dugdale 'On learning that Russian mothers buy their soldier sons lucky belts inscribed with Psalm 90 to wear into battle' Rod Mengham 'Cold War Hot Air'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
Reader Survey
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 162, Volume 31 Number 4, March - April 2005.

Le Sancerre: September Marilyn Hacker

September morning schemes of the possible:
the open sky, the late japonica, the blue day.
Noon approaches on the interplay
of what's imagined, what's forgotten, will
stay in the focus of a gaze that's still
fixed forward. There's an afterwards, to say
the rest, to mingle meanings. Let me stay
where I am, on the arc, in the break of the interval.
It rained enough through August that the trees
in the square touch a green cusp of clarity;
there's still tousled lavender near the duck-pond.
The stout proprietor of the café
puts tables out for lunch on the bare ground
- the beach beneath the torn-up paving-stones.

The beach beneath the torn-up paving-stones
presents itself as facile metaphor:
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image