I have wasted ten years. You did not love me, ever.
You laughed at me, but that was long ago.
When I was far, you thought that I might be
A glittering comfort.

They, the two woodpigeons
Sit on one branch, grow dark in the afternoon
Or sun licks round a collar. They are preening
Easy as moulting, heavy, grey and slow.
A curl of white, a single feather, falls.

As boulders wait, these two are beautiful.
I do not envy stones. The ten years are
Heavy as the feather's drifting star.
            'March pigeons'

In 1829, Alison Brackenbury's first collection for seven years, the poet travels to three continents: there are poems from her Asian, African and European journeys, and the different peopled landscapes that she visits are
evoked with her resonant lightness of touch, her granting rhythms and the
grace of a subtle, distinctive prosody.

The title poem was broadcast as part of the Mozart bicentenary celebrations on BBC Radio 3. Music has always featured in Brackenbury's poems; in this volume, which risks the dark of a minor key, it becomes a central motif. The poems travel in time as well as space. They also stay at home in a world of disorderly domesticity with cats and ponies.
    
Peter Forbes, editor of Poetry Review describes her as 'incontrovertibly the real thing, with an insistent, insidious music that once learnt becomes addictive'.