Two Poems by Éireann Lorsung

PN Review 277, May - June 2024

Postcard to Shana with image of blackbirds

It took me this long to realize that when the poet
said blackbirds, he meant blackbirds: pointing

to the world. (That’s just an image in a poem,
though.) Outside, in our now of April rain, two

blackbirds are pulling worms through the lawn’s
thatch. It’s spring, and soon no one will have

to resemble anyone except their younger self,
who ran out of university buildings in rain

like this, the fine rain of early spring, to steal
daffodils from the sleeping grounds. Come, write

back to me: my feet are soaking in the sodden grass.
My hands are raw from cold and wet. The table’s

set. The light goes through green glass. A jar
of flowers. Rain through grapevine on the panes.

Every warm thing from our girlhood calls us now.
Blackbirds. Poems. The world: its tablecloths

and rainy mornings, cities, hands, and flowers.
Its universities. Its sense of always coming to an end.

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Postcard to Shana with photograph of Floraliën Ghent, 1913

Everyone I know is losing something this year. Yesterday
I heard the cuckoo for the first time, which means

it’s really spring. Since I last wrote, invisible teams of gardeners
went to work all over Ghent, only their secateurs catching

light; in days the entire city was transformed.
Gardenias, azaleas. A young man stood near a shallow

pool breaking flowers from a peach branch, setting
them in water. Everything unrecognizable in its new

botanical clothes. You know I have been working
in an orchard of my own: peach tree and cherry

trees; apples; plum. The lawn is broken bright with daffodils.
I thought, if I leave him I will lose the garden

I made. I know I can make another garden anytime.
Nevertheless (oh – the lambs are playing now, again!), I stayed.

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These poems by Éireann Lorsung are taken from PN Review 277, May - June 2024. Further contributions from Lorsung, including the rest of the poems in this issue, are available in the archive to paying subscribers, as well as more poetry, features, reviews and reports from across the back catalogue.

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