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 53, Volume 13 Number 3, January - February 1987.

Two Poems John Gallas

A Dead Wasp in Leicester

Summer with no grass.
Reversed from papers in a mushroom's brow
one noble, savage wasp roars
in the purple tube that shocks it
going over our door.

This is an English city:
if a wasp come to it, argo,
it is strawberry jam - but
if the city go to it, look you,
well, it will.

The ensuing healthful fizz makes as tiny noise
as one factory on Narborough Road still zigging
  insteps
at this hour by the lightening horizon,
or a little palsy of bones
in your rural philosopher's box.

In its declining brain-fever and electric
(but too short!) perception,
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image