Music is the motif which underlies the poems in Marius Kociejowski’s second book. In ‘Dinu Lipatti plays Chopin’s Sonata in B minor’, a musical theme illustrates the solitude of a troubled woman ‘who is no man’s, only music’s bride’; elsewhere, music is the link in the relationship between the dying Chopin and George Sand. Other poems explore tenderness and the origins of violence. Marius Kociejowski is a poet of high intelligence and accomplishment, with a gift for historical empathy and a voice entirely his own.