The purity of science cannot change the common sins of beakers and retorts, the broken backs of coal fields conjuring up thin tubes of ether and glass, dead Merlin's spells transmuting North Sea oil to Armani's smells. Another historical reflection takes up the rivalries of clam and oyster harvesters. Dark fishermen thread the fish, or fugitive, home to the fire, while broken buoys cork the Irish channel, and migrant birds have flown. Like a glob of mercury, the first sentence holds itself together by surface tension, skittering away from attempts to grasp it firmly. Some of the shorter poems in this book also arise from arresting historical figures or moments.
Someone lives there still.
Someone more sensitive, perhaps. Out of eight long summers there's little left to save. The energy of the collection is richly informed by the tension between such short-line stanzas and the more sinuous and leisurely style of the longer poems. Over the cooling coffee, each faced his own estrangement. Alone I went to meet a previous engagement.