Poems on relationships, animals, pets and nature, religion, war, and remembrance, but mainly on death. Smith isn't morbid or excessively melancholy, but here, in the last set of poems she wrote before her death (published posthumously), she meditates upon the approach of her lifetime's end, reflecting that, "I aspire to be broken up". Of death, she had elsewhere said it was the knowledge that there was an end that helped, through her periods of depression, to keep her in life. In the present collection, she says in the poem Oblivion,

"I cannot help but like Oblivion better
Than being a human heart and human creature,
But I can wait for her, her gentle mist
And those sweet seas that deepen are my destiny
And must come even if not soon."

Several of the poems are in a nursery rhyme style, though the underlying feelings are not childish, while several others are like fairy tales, suspended between reality and fancy. Of these, Angel Boley is the darkest poem in the collection, and startlingly relevant to the increasing awareness in society of the nature, extent and impact of childhood sexual abuse (the sexual element of the abuse is not explicitely mentioned, but seems to me implicit). Sixteen-year-old Angel Boley lives with her wicked mother, Malady Festing, and equally wicked husband, Hark Boley, in a lonely, moorland house.

"Hark, said Malady, it is time
To take another couple of children
Into our kitchen.
Hark laughed, for he too was wicked and he knew
For what purpose the little children
Were required."

Chilling! The suggestion of cannibalism being a metaphor for other, perhaps darker, passions. Angel's life lived in a dream of absentmindedness, In order not to be too much aware, has the feel of that psychological dissociation consequent upon severe and repeated trauma. The suspicion in which Angel is held by the neighbouring villagers on account of her relationship to her feared mother smacks of victim-blaming, whilst the failure to report their concerns to the police speaks of that collective turning away from the horror of abuse that has led to the silencing of so many survivor's voices. That Angel prevents any further abuses is a consolation for the tragedy of her ending, though the judgement of Heaven turns out to be less severe than the judgement of the law, doctors and ministers of religion.

Not all is dark in this collection, however, and Smith is whimsical and affectionate in her treatment of dogs, cats and donkeys, and nostalgically reflective about her childhood.

This is my first exposure to Smith's poetry (other than her much-anthologised Not Waving But Drowning), and I feel a most present sense of her as a person. I'm left with a affectionate regard for her and, if asked, "Which people from history would you invite to a dinner party?" I'd hope Stevie would be one of those attending. ( )