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 119, Volume 24 Number 3, January - February 1998.

Remembrance Tim Kendall

                I

                the time I ran my key along the paintwork
                the times I lied about the sweets
                the time I smashed a window at the school
                the time I hid the teacher's bike
                the time I bullied juniors till they cried

                that good may come

                the times I cheated in exams
                the time I told a girl my best friend hated her
                the times I kissed my best friend's wife
                the time I blamed it all on her
                the times I squandered wages down the pub
                the time I found a wallet crammed with cash

                where moth and rust doth corrupt

                the lying sometimes just for fun
                the jealousy of others' just rewards
                the sloth which blanks entire months
                the cowardice when it is time to speak
                the rage at fools the self-disgust
                the pride in floggings such as this
                the arrogance the bitterness the

                which indeed appear beautiful outward


                II

                with love
                                indifferent love
                with eyes
                                unseeing eyes
                with hands
                                unfeeling hands
                with silence
                                cacophonous silence
                a union
                                indivisible
                no outside
                                the moment
                no outside
                                the moment
                awareness
                                no action
                dissolution
                                no border
                a rapture
                                an opening
                infinite
                                a moment


III

noesis
knowledge beyond sense
a certainty
deeper much deeper
than sight
and other trappings
of the flesh

but incommunicable
so we turn
from the lifting
the gale of voices
so we turn
from the clouds
while words

miss their moment
as many have known
pressing
like stigmata
as if maybe
I cannot say
I cannot say


This poem is taken from PN Review 119, Volume 24 Number 3, January - February 1998.



Readers are asked to send a note of any misprints or mistakes that they spot in this poem to editor@pnreview.co.uk
Further Reading: - Tim Kendall More Poems by... (1) Articles by... (3) Reviews by... (5) Reviews of... (2)
Searching, please wait... animated waiting image