Reviewing politics
and culture since 1913

  1. Culture
  2. Poetry
6 April 2022

The NS Poem: A reply to Wallace Stevens, with a line from John Donne

A new poem by John Burnside.

By John Burnside

Cold in the shade, and yet, by afternoon
the snow is burning off along
the fence-line, where it lay in drifts for weeks,
a chill white, warming slowly to a blur
of slush and haze.
                                     I don’t have a mind

of winter. Only the timeworn saltlick of a heart
which can by no way be express’d
but negatives;
             yet nothing is more erotic than the way
the snowmelt spills and spends into the ditch,
still cold as ice, but mesmerised with green,

and though there’s nothing here that I could
     name,
I feel it, mesozoic, intimate,
one moment on the cusp of something else,
not one thing or the other: something else.

John Burnside is a Scottish author and poet, and the New Statesman’s nature columnist. His most recent poetry collection is “Learning to Sleep” (Jonathan Cape)

Content from our partners
Digital sovereignty should sit at the core of the UK’s AI strategy
The Hidden Cost of Poor Lung Health
Labour's historic opportunity

Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month

This article appears in the 06 Apr 2022 issue of the New Statesman, Easter Special