The terror slips from its dream image along forest tracks and pathways of the mind,and emerges scrawny, exhausted by a long winter, sniffing at the town garbage dump. For now, the sun may complete its nuclear explosions with impunity out of the reach of slackened jaws. 'a poet at the height of his inspiration.' Michael Symmons Roberts, "TLS". 'a deceptively readable poetry that leaves phrases and images in the mind as the best poems should.' - Gillian Clarke, "The David Jones Journal".This collection consists of poems set in continental Europe, Palestine and Wales. From Spitzbergen to Jerusalem, the poems render different places with physical immediacy, and reveal the historical and cultural forces that have gone to their making. The main unifying theme is the relation between European culture, with its history of violent destructiveness as well as creativity, and images of the Great Mother. It is an ambitious book of poems, which explores the roots of Western civilization and is informed by a sense of crisis in the relation between European 'man' and the natural world.