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

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,...

poetry

February 2013

Redacted, Redacted

Les Kay

poetry

February 2013

Here the censorship, which you’ve taught yourself, is self-inflicted (low sugar, low fat); it begins with the swinging shadow...

fiction

January 2014

Textile

Orly Castel-Bloom

TR. Dalya Bilu

fiction

January 2014

It was not only avoiding thoughts of home that helped the good sniper to carry out his mission as...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required