Most Read... John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Joshua WeinerAn Exchange with Daniel Tiffany/Fall 2020
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Christopher MiddletonNotes on a Viking Prow
(PN Review 10)
Next Issue Between Languages, Howard Cooper 'Ur-language' Oksana Maksymchuk 'Multifarious Beast' Zinovy Zinik 'My Mother Tongue, My Fatherland' Philip Terry 'Lost Languages' Victoria Moul 'Bad Latin, Barbarous Inglishe'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
Reader Survey
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 4, Volume 4 Number 4, July - September 1978.

Two Poems Val Warner

ACROSS THE YARD

It is the moment of the lighting of
the lamps, whose flair and of the Lares flared,
flaming switch is homecoming and Laura's theme:
dusk falls at six, the lighting of the year
standing a while while dark creeps up on us
whose homecoming's across the royal parks,
departures nothing all over Europe

the lights go up, dusk falling down again.
Chance of illumination like the sun
picks out a rainbow chequering among
day's rows of warder eyes of tenements
keeping the day, their window on their world
twilit, whose salmon, peaches, oranges
glowing against a donkey coat, dun dusk

darkened to yellow and white panes of light
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image