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Over the Dead Flatness of the Fens

By William Logan b. 1950 William Logan

Like columns of mist

in some temple to a vanished god,

the late cloud-stacks mass over a June

reduced to the sickly greens of the Norfolk broads;

and, above the steam-soiled mess

where earthworms grovel, where lumpish toads

set up the resistances of grace,

where badgers undermine the tarred road,

I watch the canvas of that underpainted sky

through a jellied glass of vermouth

while the gravestone crops up

and an oily wind steels itself to the south.

There certain winged creatures

from a century misplaced on shelves

take the day down with a moaning chant

known to themselves.

Source: Poetry (September 2010).

Biography

Poet and critic William Logan was born in Boston in 1950 and earned degrees from Yale University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Since 1975, his work—both poetry and criticism—has regularly appeared in major journals and publications such as the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Paris Review, Poetry, and the New Criterion. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Sad-Faced Men (1982), Sullen Weedy Lakes (1988), . . .

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