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 Hal Coase 'Ochre Pitch' Gregory Woods 'On Queerness' Kirsty Gunn 'On Risk! Carl Phillips' Galina Rymbu 'What I Haven't Written' translated by Sasha Dugdale Gabriel Josipovici 'No More Stories' Valerie Duff-Strautmann 'Anne Carson's Wrong Norma'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
PN Review 275
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 90, Volume 19 Number 4, March - April 1993.

Four Poems John Burnside

ASTURIAS

There are villages you reach, climbing the hills,
silences you almost breathe
between the graveyards and the whited walls,
a mass of fup and twine behind the church,
cobwebs of moss and venom in the wells.

In spring it rains for weeks above the square,
pigeons disappear into the haze

and people sit all night in lit cafes
talking about the dead in better times:
the quiet labour soaking up their days,
their unexpected loves, their sudden crimes.


ANTEOTOÑO

Let everything go unrecorded:
the plane trees, the scattered apples,
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image