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 2, Volume 4 Number 2, January - March 1978.

Three Poems C.H. Sisson

l.
This is the only place that I inhabit:
The desert.
No drop of water: no palm-trees: nothing.
No gourd, no cactus: sand
Heaped on all sides like mountainous seas
To drown in
Luckily I cannot see myself, I am alone
No mirror, glass, plastic left by an Arab
Nothing
I cannot say it too often
Nothing
The sand itself would diminish if I said yes
No rascally Bedouin
Praying mantis, or nice people
A mirage of them, occasionally
But they are not there, any more than I,
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image