Darkness piling up in the corners

defying the soulless moon …

it is neither today’s tomorrow

nor is it tonight’s last night

but now

and forever

and you are scared

for this is forever

and this is death

and nothing

and mourning.

That poem, the only one V S Naipaul ever wrote, was in a bundle of some of his early work that he deposited in a London warehouse in the 50s. Unfortunately, they were incinerated. “Although this destruction may not match the burning of the library in Alexandria in its importance, it was a substantial literary loss,” said Patrick French, his authorised biographer. French did a little sleuthing in the BBC’s archives, and unearthed grainy microfilm of four short stories, a radio play, and the poem above, which was broadcast from London to the West Indies just after his 18th birthday. More in Outlook and The Telegraph.

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