Jon Silkin
Printer

Any day soon the sudden pictures I tip into the linguistic eye,

images I print having litho-intense surface,

a man with a woman, he naked with her beside

a tree its bark clothes. Look, a ginger money

spider climbing. God is now. The vicar

who likes fingers of toast raises Him to congregated eyes.

And the rabbi, heated to a pitch of hatred, being afraid,

I also am a Jew, hating and afraid,

they each raise Him, the universe’s tenderest heart,

to eyes forsaken in and enduring midsummer radiance.

It hurts, and it is true it will not cease.

In what phase of this will I be dying into your creation?

 
Found In Volume 27, No. 04
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  • John Silkin
Jon Silkin
About the Author

Jon Silkin's first poetry collection, The Peaceable Kingdom, was published in 1954. He was known also as editor of the literary magazine Stand, which he founded in 1952, and which he continued to edit (with a hiatus from 1957 to 1960) until his death in 1997.