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 59, Volume 14 Number 3, January - February 1988.

Two Poems Grevel Lindop

Going to Bed Early
Illness, and going to bed early: this is like childhood -
the carved knobs at the foot of the bed, the patchwork
  quilt
a country paved with square fields an index of
other places other beds, peripheral aunts and
  families.
And this willingness to wait, as if inside
some dusty lacquered box carved to the shape of a fruit
reserves of time had been found and cautiously
unfolded, so that an hour can be spent in the glow of a
  lamp
tracing the bloom on the fall of a red velvet curtain
or re-reading the first chapter of a favourite novel
not opened for years. For nothing new must be
  started,
the mind will sample the aroma of evening
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image