The poems in this latest collection by Martin Anderson are largely concerned with the nature, from both a perceptual and ontological perspective, of continuing and intrinsic identities. We belong "To nowhere/to no thing/to the shortest abridgement/of air of word/to the cruel insignia/of our acquisitions". At the heart of all that we are, of all that we think, feel, see, touch, taste and smell, are 'shadows/pulled through/a world impatient/to sound'. A world, pregnant with meaning and language, which is, finally, a 'mirror colliding/with its reflection'.