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 124, Volume 25 Number 2, November - December 1998.

Seven Poems Patrick Mackie

Night Train

The paucity of conversation - and of essays and theories,
and truths for that matter - as against this intensity

no one has intended - a dark bloom on the desperate enterprises,
the felicities of moonlight against the smears on the windows.


An Emotion Constitutes a Magical Transformation of the World

A deepening ensues - like the feeling of watching
the chiaroscuro being added to a charcoal portrait of yourself

after you've finished posing. You can do nothing now but witness
the accretion of shades - the plush layering - a revelation by smudging.


A Parable

This poor old earth - but see, a little rain, a little
sun, and everything is green again. This means that
when you finally get round to braving the flecked, sparkly
streets, the sensations that await you will be abundant,

perhaps excessively so. It's a law of physics, that is, that each
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image