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 47, Volume 12 Number 3, January - February 1986.

Two Poems Charles Boyle

SUBMISSION

The muezzin's recording booms
Allahu akbar, God is Great, and the lights
in the rooms go on and the market lights.

On hands and knees, a woman is praying
in front of her bedroom mirror; others
on the patch of littered grass
between the kiosk and the cinema.

On a damp autumn evening in London
with the rain just holding off
I go on watching, still awed
by that rigid precision that begins

even earlier than prayer - right foot forward
across the threshold, the shoes carried
in the left hand, the hand
for unclean uses, my writing hand.
 
HOW DID YOU GET ABOUT?
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image