Most Read... John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Joshua WeinerAn Exchange with Daniel Tiffany/Fall 2020
(PN Review 259)
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 Kirsty Gunn re-arranges the world John McAuliffe reads Seamus Heaney's letters and translations Chris Price's 'Songs of Allegiance' David Herman on Aharon Appelfeld Victoria Moul on Christopher Childers compendious Greek and Latin Lyric Book Philip Terry again answers the question, 'What is Poetry'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
Reader Survey
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 182, Volume 34 Number 6, July - August 2008.

In the Bowels of the Lower Cave R.F. Langley


In the Bowels of the Lower Cave

at Gargas, Abbé Breuil took photographs
of the engravings illuminated
from his left. He figured a fragment, the

forelegs of a horse, their feathering scored
dexterously on bright rock, unshadowed
by the hand using the burin. Twenty

years later the Easthams sensed the pressures
better done by a left hand, and moved their
lamp across. Then, manifest at once, less

deeply cut but a complete conception,
the whole horse stirred to take possession of
its legs. At Ekain, Bison Fourteen is

sane and sound, provided the source of light
is four feet from the surface, four feet from
the floor and twenty inches left of your
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image