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 166, Volume 32 Number 2, November - December 2005.

Three Poems Chris McCully

Geese at Vinkeveen

'Do not concern yourself with the form of pain'
                                                       Dante, Purgatorio X

Spring and autumn it's Limbo -
cat civet staining
the spears of the crocuses;
a magpie wiping its beak against the lawn;
switching on and switching off
the hosepipe and the community fountain;
and there are the geese at Vinkeveen.

Their sky has been no civil enclosure.
The clouds wished for by fishermen
are simply the bringers of magnetism.
The magnificent sunset and the appearing moon,
filigree of isobars on the weather-map,
have no point beyond a form of digestion,
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image