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

Issue No. 16

Walking Backwards

Tristan Garcia

TR. Jeffrey Zuckerman

fiction

Issue No. 16

‘Moderne, c’est déjà vieux.’ La Féline   I.   I pretended to remember and I smiled: it was time...

feature

October 2013

A World of Sharp Edges: A Week Among Poets in the Western Cape

André Naffis-Sahely

feature

October 2013

In Antal Szerb’s The Incurable, the eccentric millionaire Peter Rarely steps into the dining car of a train steaming...

Interview

January 2016

Interview with Fiston Mwanza Mujila

Roland Glasser

Interview

January 2016

Roof terrace of the Shangri-La hotel, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, USA; late afternoon, 8 October 2015. We ensconce ourselves in...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required