Most Read... Rebecca WattsThe Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239)
John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Tim Parksin conversation with Natalia Ginzburg
(PN Review 49)
Next Issue James K. Baxter, Uncollected Poems Rod Mengham, Last Exit for the Revolution Stav Poleg, The Citadel of the Mind Jena Schmitt, Resting Places: The Writing-Life F Friederike Mayrocker Wayne Hill, Poems
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
PN Review 275
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 103, Volume 21 Number 5, May - June 1995.

Two Poems John Heath-Stubbs


Naming of Rivers
Rivers in Celtic countries, or at least
Where those languages were spoken once,
Are just great waters - Avon or Usk,
Or else presiding femininities,
Nursing mothers of the lands they flow through -
The Irish Ban, and Anna Livia,
The Dee, divine one, likewise Milton's Sabrina,
The Don, who is the great goddess Danau
Who mated with the Dagda on a water-course
And took her name perhaps from the wide flood
The Tanäis, or the Danube, where first maybe
The speakers of our linked and kindred dialects -
Indian and European -
Milked their flocks of ewes, herded their beeves,
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image