David Malouf’s brilliant collection of poems begins with a memory of new love

with ‘grace unasked for, urgencies that boom under the pocket of a shirt’

and ends in the intimate territory of the long-familiar where there is no need for words. This volume is marked by an astonishing breadth of intelligence and erudition, yet steps lightly among the objects of our lives and the wonder of everyday replenishments. Everywhere the poems affirm the mystical delights of music, angels and fields where ‘first to gather are the starlings in unquiet flocks. Then quietly, the stars’.
(To read some poetry, see the AI)