Most Read... Rebecca WattsThe Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239)
John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Joshua WeinerAn Exchange with Daniel Tiffany/Fall 2020
(PN Review 259)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Next Issue Kirsty Gunn re-arranges the world John McAuliffe reads Seamus Heaney's letters and translations Chris Price's 'Songs of Allegiance' David Herman on Aharon Appelfeld Victoria Moul on Christopher Childers compendious Greek and Latin Lyric Book Philip Terry again answers the question, 'What is Poetry'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
Reader Survey
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 27, Volume 9 Number 1, September - October 1982.

By Mummelsee John Peck
DOWN from those bluff crests breeding the Ohio
one can take plank stairs, or a rickety incline;
with much the same plunge deepened and turned west,

over the Zürchersee the Dolder drops you
along a footpath or cog tram. But Mummelsee
strands you above its bowl, without wings.

Inching down, sun ahead for guide, I felt
how fighters keep only enough of themselves
to slice against the thrust or ebb of their chances.

How for them the future of memory
is no wider than sun-glint on their metal,
a rolling weld, so that their failed attempts

to reconstruct loved faces do not stop them.
That takes something unforeseen, the abrupt
cul de sac, trip wire, operative impasse.

An untried man told me he came to Mummelsee
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image