Having Watched the News While Abroad

Shane McCrae

for Camille Ralphs

The buzzing of the big fans in the night I heard the hornets growl they do not buzz I heard it somewhere where it was I was There far and years away from the loud white Corpse trailers was four years an eight-hour flight Two transfers far they growl and they eat bees They are invasive they are dangerous To English gardens heard it where I might Have strolled an English garden heard it when’s The news there I had talked the night before About the trailers for the first time since The trailers were how close their hive-cell vents Warm air in cold air like a floating scar To block the noise of the fans I turned on fans

The Yale Review · "Having Watched the News While Abroad" by Shane McCrae

How did this poem begin for you?

Back in June, I was briefly—too briefly—the Whichcote Society Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and one night during my time there I was with a brilliant group of people walking to dinner, and in particular talking with Camille Ralphs, whose debut book of poetry, After You Were, I Am, everyone ought to read. For whatever reason, the conversation turned to the pandemic, and, possibly because I was far from New York, I started talking, for the first time, really, about the trailers in which the dead were kept temporarily during the early part of the pandemic—I hadn’t realized the great emotional weight of the memory until that night. The next day, I think, I saw a story on the local news about a particular kind of invasive hornet that was plaguing English gardens and wrote the poem immediately thereafter.

Shane McCrae is the author, most recently, of the poetry collection The Many Hundreds of the Scent. His memoir, Pulling the Chariot of the Sun, was published in 2023. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.