Amazon.com description: Product Description: `Not many poets have McCarthy's gift of being able to write so tenderly about private affections and so acutely about public figures and events.' Brendan Kennelly's comment on an earlier McCarthy collection is just as true of his new book. The title-sequence is a series of brief poems reflecting on Ireland and Paris, past and present. Others are set in London and Cork; their starting-points include library work, being in hospital, railway stations and family life. These are eloquent, incisive and moving poems which make their mark with the `lovely delicacy of touch' which, as George Szirtes said, `is seen at its best in quiet poems full of telling detail.'