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 276
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 98, Volume 20 Number 6, July - August 1994.

Three Poems Michael Hamburger

Church and Market
(Salzburg)

Ample space it encloses, but worldly space
Which now the mountains humble;
Brokenly rounded for the ornaments
Of marble, stucco, paint, for angels' heads
That peer from fluffy clouds above the central altar,
Half-Cupids puffed or so rotundly fleshed
And chubby-cheeked that they could fall,
Though here, cloud-draped, they rest,
Hover or on their stubby wings ascend
To where no eye unaided
Can follow, see their lineaments dissolve.

And down on earth, in sunshine,
Air without angels, only clouds
Too high, far, thin to matter,
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image