I beg of you believe in the Kings, the blacksmith's tribe, the Boorgoodjides
made up of the tamar, true twisters of sastra, sras or srastrakani...
    
                                                     from 'Kings'

Who are the invisible kings? Why do two bears follow them round Britain? And what happens when a gypsy's curse comes miraculously to life? David Morley's new book reveals extraordinary worlds where the real and imagined converge in stories and charms, just this side of science and magic.

When David Morley's Romani poems first appeared in the London Review of Books and PN Review, the strangeness of the language and their narrative power convinced readers that here was a genuinely new imaginative world. Partly Romani himself, the poet follows - and remakes - a tradition of weaving stories, from the conflicts in his own culture and that of the Roma. The personal poems that open the collection develop into a traveller's-eye view of England and Europe as stages for war, passion and betrayal. Never before has a writer made such daring and beautiful use of the Romani language as a vehicle for contemporary poetry, nor has a Romani poem achieved the devastating epic scope of 'Kings', the central narrative of the collection.

The Invisible Kings continues a cycle of poems that began with David Morley's Scientific Papers and which will conclude with An Island Blown Inland.

'David Morley takes us on a voyage to the other half of his heritage. In a serial masterpiece of macaronic verse, he shows us a life intimate with our own...yet more deeply Other than romantic fairytales or even authentic music from Spain and Eastern Europe had suggested it might be. He holds our world up to a language mostly kept secret up to now...the refraction of the familiar is dizzying yet often moving.' - LES MURRAY

Contents



You Were Broken
In Cold Dimensions
Paul Celan: Draft of a Landscape
Of the Genus Diatomaceae
Patrìn
Sikavnò
Icicle-steel
Finn of the Wiles
Fiction
Smoke, Mirror
Sèsi o Lety U Písku
A Rainbow
Te Avel Angle Tute
Shookàr Mooklò Chàv
Songs of Songs
The Gypsy Kings
Kings
Whitethroat
Dotterel
Redpoll
Goldcrests
Red-Throated Pipit
Siskin
Goldfinches
Snowfinches
To Feed the Dead Who Would Come Disguised as Birds
Bears
A Boy Casting Snow on Winter Barley
A Static Ballroom
Garèzi Gilì
An Ice Queen
Nets at Gennesaret
Sky High Ice
The Ideal
European Larch
Sycamore
Translucent Jiy¯ushiBanners
Texts to the Inventor ofItalics
A Printer’s Rose
Architects of the Frari,Venice
Croix Pantoum: TenthChristmas for Isaac
The Waves
Ludus Coventriae
Notes