Among the characters encountered in the book are a dying Pope, a diligent hangman, a banker's daughter (who couples with the plumber), a young woman who wants to force her way into a library, a starving cat, children and the aged and the dead, a bridegroom who goes to sleep for fifty years and a death-row marriage, the snake and the lion and crocuses and forsythia. Silence, seasons, war, and love are all explained (or clarified). Word play occasionally intrudes. The poems are organized into six categories: Politics and War; Nature; Decay & Death; Love; Scrutiny & Introspection; Words & Books.
