Memory, including the tricks it plays, is this book's overriding theme. The poems seek to revive happy, confusing, sad and celebratory times over more than half a century, from affairs in distant youth to the credit crunch. They recall friends now beyond known life, misinterpretations giving rise to comedy, epiphanies like a newborn calf or the shock of a painting, and hours dedicated to translation or literary experiments. The book, which also includes translations of some favourite modern poems, tries to come to terms with time itself.