Front Cover -- About the Author -- Copyright -- Table of Contents -- A Note on the Text -- Preface by John Fuller -- 1: 1938-1944 -- from Poems (1939) and As From the Thirties (1983) -- To M.S., Killed in Spain -- August 1938 -- After the Spanish Civil War -- To My Brother -- from The Middle of a War (1942) -- Autumn 1939 -- The Barber -- First Winter of War -- To My Wife -- Autumn 1940 -- Soliloquy in an Air Raid -- Epitaph on a Bombing Victim -- ABC of a Naval Trainee -- Defending the Harbour -- Royal Naval Air Station -- The End of a Leave -- The Middle of a War -- Another War -- Spring 1942 -- Harbour Ferry -- Goodbye for a Long Time -- Troopship -- from A Lost Season (1944) -- The Photographs -- The Green Hills of Africa -- The Giraffes -- The Plains -- Askari's Song -- The White Conscript and the Black Conscript -- Convicts Working on the Aerodrome -- The Tribes -- Sadness, Theory, Glass -- Shore Leave Lorry -- The Coast -- The Petty Officer's Mess -- Today and Tomorrow -- The Emotion of Fiction -- The Statue -- Epitaphs for Soldiers -- Winter in Camp -- 2: 1945-1962 -- from Epitaphs and Occasions (1949) -- During a Bombardment by V-Weapons -- Schwere Gustav -- Meditation -- To My Son -- The Gaze -- Obituary of R. Fuller -- from Counterparts (1954) -- Rhetoric of a Journey -- Youth Revisited -- The Image -- Translation -- The Meeting -- from Brutus's Orchard (1957) -- Autobiography of a Lungworm -- On Grazing a Finger -- The Day -- The Ides of March -- The Perturbations of Uranus -- Mythological Sonnets -- from Collected Poems (1962) -- Monologue in Autumn -- On the Mountain -- from Faustian Sketches -- Questions to Mephistopheles -- The Princes -- The Hittites -- Versions of Love -- from Meredithian Sonnets -- from Buff (1965) -- Love and Murder -- The Historian -- 3: 1963-1977 -- from New Poems (1968) -- The Symphonist -- Chinoiserie.

Reading The Bostonians in Algeciras Bay -- The Map -- Ambiguities of Travel -- In Memory of my Cat, Domino: 1951-66 -- Orders -- The Visitors -- Disasters -- Those of Pure Origin -- Afternoons -- Windows -- Departures -- Last Sheet -- from Tiny Tears (1973) -- Deficiencies -- Tiny Tears -- The Unremarkable Year -- Georgic -- from From the Joke Shop (1975) -- The Card Table -- Shakespeare and Co -- Elephants, Ants, Doves -- The Voyage -- Essential Memory -- Late November -- Strange Meeting -- From the Joke Shop -- The Future -- Being -- from The Reign of Sparrows (1980) -- Two Muses -- Ghost Voice -- Hedge-Sparrows and House-Sparrows -- 1935-75 -- from In His Sixty-Fifth Year -- 1976 Draws to a Close -- Singing, 1977 -- from Quatrains of an Elderly Man -- In the Night -- Poetry and Whist -- Ordinary Seaman -- Winter -- 4: 1977-1989 -- from New and Collected Poems (1985) -- Years -- Autumn 1981 -- On the 160th Anniversary of the Discovery of the First Quarto of Hamlet -- Old Themes -- from Mianserin Sonnets -- Dreams and Art -- Symphonic Dances -- from Subsequent to Summer (1985) -- Symphonic Dances -- Death on the Heath -- Dimensions -- Is God a Mathematician? -- In the Park -- The Powers -- Anatomy of a Cat -- from Consolations (1987) -- Down Kaunda Street -- Questions of Entropy -- The Scale -- Touching -- Booloo -- The Marcellus Version -- from Literary Footnotes -- Felicity -- Amatory Dreaming in Old Age -- Preserving -- Ward 1G -- from Available for Dreams (1989) -- Another Art -- Lessons of the Summer -- Teatimes Past and Present -- The Hairbrush -- The Elderly Husband -- Bird of Passage -- Oneself -- Nature Programme -- Dans un Omnibus de Londres -- News of the World -- from The Cancer Hospital -- Your Absence -- Postscript -- from Last Poems (1993) -- Minor Keys -- Summer Laughter -- Nasty Weather Ahead -- Metaphors -- Advice to the Elderly.

The Envious Poet -- Triangles -- The Letter -- Venus, Mars and Cupid -- My Life -- Later Sonnets from the Portuguese -- The Story -- Afterword by Neil Powell -- Index of Titles and First lines.