This poem is taken from PN Review 62, Volume 14 Number 6, July - August 1988.

Two Poems

Donald Davie

Cannibals

As if to take in ocean
through a needle's eye,
a sundial divines
not why light moves, but when;

when, and how. He moves
now. And perhaps He loves us.
He moves in any case.
We trace, not chart, His passage,

like Uruguayan, defiled
prop-forwards and blind-side flankers,
iced up in the Andes,
cannibals, knowing Him near.

My home shalt thou exalt
like the home of an unicorne
. . .

Presence, the nearness, is
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