In this stunning collection, Bauke Kamstra has scooped out the hollow of nature and returned with the expressions of its soul. Everywhere the poet looks, he sees acutely: a tree 'has earned/its suffering/and its pieces/falling, ' and of the people who live in its river weathering, Kamstra remembers that 'my mother's accordion/played so/many hymns/but the ecstasy/was all hers.'

From the opening poem, in which a woman's washing reveals her violence, to his lament that he is returning with a war poem but not his leg, 'because my leg died there, ' Kamstra reveals himself as a deeply gifted poet. Emily Dickinson would have kept this collection nearby.