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 Poetry Nation 2 Number 2, 1974.

Five Poems (translated from the German by Michael Hamburger) Daniel Weissbort


THE EXECUTIONER

Why, my dear friend, were you being executed?
We knew the executioner, but all the same, who was he?
Why was I there? And in that last respite,
before the coup de grâce,
what did we speak of?
I have forgotten.

He tried to get you used to it - the roar,
the rush of air, the burning powder,
with demonstration shots, angled to pass
closer and closer. And you sat
at the table, inattentive, absent.
And in between his efforts to familiarise you with
the manner of your death, we chatted
fitfully, casually as ever
(as though I had been detailed somehow to distract you);
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image