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 Poetry Nation 4 Number 4, 1975.

In Memoriam W. H. Auden Roger Garfitt

Draw back the sackcloth from the windows.
Lock the revolver in the desk drawer.
Another kind of silence
is entering at the open door.
In the writing lamp's circumference,
within the ambient dust,
a concentration is lost.

Throw the dust-sheets over the Cave of Making.
Pile the thirteen volumes of the Dictionary
alphabetically upon the floor.
Archaism returns to the antiquary,
logodaedaly to the ad-men and the Law.
The leaves are silent. These oracles are dumb,
and history all that mystery can become.

Light a candle in Kirkstetten.
Let Aedes Christi ring his passing bell.
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image