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 Between Languages, Howard Cooper 'Ur-language' Oksana Maksymchuk 'Multifarious Beast' Zinovy Zinik 'My Mother Tongue, My Fatherland' Philip Terry 'Lost Languages' Victoria Moul 'Bad Latin, Barbarous Inglishe'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
Reader Survey
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 68, Volume 15 Number 6, July - August 1989.

A Poem C.H. Sisson

Thurloxton

Was silence the best they said?
Was it? For no
The answer was, from the dead.
How should they know?

"You who stand by our graves
And vainly boast,"
They gravely said, "are slaves,
And more than most.

"Our words are gone and done,
We have no use for them:
You, in the rain and sun,
Move towards Bethlehem.

"Presenting gold and myrrh,
The fine, the sad,
You who are where we were
Have what we had

"- Thoughts which do not return,
Flying away
Over the trees which learn
Nothing to say.

"Their whisper still remains,
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image