Back from the Moon

Back from the Moon begins with poems of place and transition--a tunnel, an empty beach, an overgrown quarry--inhabited by half-seen foxes, zoo animals undressing, an infestation of swans, Byron's lover Claire Clairmont. Mata Hari, and by unreal princesses and angels dancing on the head of a pin. But then it is cleft by the shock and tragedy of a father's illness, and finishes with a double sequence that speaks first of dementia seen from the outside, then invents a voice for a woman living inside that condition.