share


Flatlands

Horses and geese in a sodden field.
Solitaries with luggage on a wet platform.
Postage-stamp house on a bit of land,
a copse, a fold, a quadrant of wood,
lines of beech, lines of poplar,
miniature commentary magnified
in the glass, winter streaking the window,
the train bearing, not bearing the weight
within. Let this not be thought
(one thought to oneself), non-
thoughts of passengers on the way forward
backward through the hour.

 


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

Saskia Hamilton is the author of As for Dream (2001), Divide These (2005), Canal (2005), and Corridor (forthcoming 2014). She is also the editor of The Letters of Robert Lowell (2005) and co-editor of Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (2008). She teaches at Barnard College, Columbia University.



READ NEXT

fiction

February 2016

The Reactive

Masande Ntshanga

fiction

February 2016

My back cramps on the toilet bowl. I stretch it. Then I take two more painkillers and look down...

poetry

January 2015

Diana's Tree

Alejandra Pizarnik

TR. Yvette Siegert

poetry

January 2015

Diana’s Tree, Alejandra Pizarnik’s fourth collection, was published in 1962, when the poet was barely 26 years old. Named after...

feature

Issue No. 7

Bracketing the World: Reading Poetry through Neuroscience

James Wilkes

feature

Issue No. 7

The anechoic chamber at University College London has the clutter of a space shared by many people: styrofoam cups,...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required