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 215, Volume 40 Number 3, January - February 2014.

An Empty Street
After Ottone Rosai, Via San Leonardo
Jeffrey Wainwright
What is there to an empty street?
And one so commonplace,
narrow, with two high walls,
bending out of view.
No one in sight
and no one expected.
No Dame Trot for sure,
with her basket over her arm,
the check cloth covering dainties,
her hat perched so,
her pince-nez expectant.
Even she has hurried away.

***

What is there to an empty street?
The photo (bottom right,
curated later)
shows the doorway
to have been your studio
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image