Publisher’s Blurb
‘A thousand ages burn like palaces…’ The image conjures up one aspect of Brian Aldiss’s poetry, an impression of infinity leaning over one’s shoulder. The domestic, the everyday, is also near at hand. Mary Shelley sits with her baby, giving it milk and love – yet she is writing her ominously prophetic novel. Always the urge to grander things; Icarus sails gladly upwards, ‘unheeding such silly limitations as the melting point of wax…’

To this collection Brian Aldiss brings all of his widely recognised skill as a fine writer, and the poems – though occasionally light and chirpy – carry with them a sense of wonder; delight in both the universe and its inhabitants.

FIRST EDITION: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995