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 257, Volume 47 Number 3, January - February 2021.

Two Poems Madeleine Pulman-Jones
Embassies

In Moscow, I lived opposite a row of embassies.
They rolled down the street like a sentence

off a polyglot’s tongue.
One morning, I found a full stop

in front of the Estonian embassy:
a lump on my neck. It felt final,

and I knew denial was hopeless –
that the year had run out of breath.

Even in the day’s new light,
the facades coloured a sunset –

The Netherlands was yellow, Japan was pink,
Estonia was the grey that comes before night.

I used to think that seeing was puzzling out –
that it was a kind of translation. For example,

I knew that if you looked hard enough,
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image