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 95, Volume 20 Number 3, January - February 1994.

Three Poems Lawrence Sail

A Spell Against Parting
Too often it is either, or -
Either the one turning back
To a world gone dull, or even
Sometimes the one who settles
To a book or a fitful sleep
As the aeroplane powers up
Through cloud-drifts into sunlight:
Just one, who seems bereft.

But let it be the two of us
As we come and go, who are kept
Happy by the mad lovely lightning
That welds all the gaps: and who stay
Safe as one, under African heat
Or the drench of the monsoon rain.



In Your Absence
I can offer you only two things,
Whatever their disguises -
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image