The white clock / poems by Owen Marshall.

The white clock -- Location, location -- Tough cookie -- Turkish delight -- Living in truth or consequences -- Being Rupert -- Herbalist -- Night traffic -- Saudade -- Hand in hand -- Reverie cascade -- Long time no see -- Walking by myself -- Reality -- Hospice room -- Friends -- Winter rations -- Particulars -- Juxtaposition -- Aliens -- Spirit image -- Caledon river -- On the end of a shovel -- Bonsai: Hagley Park -- Birdstrike -- Laughing man -- Disenchantment -- This is my life -- Hanging in -- Now departs -- Haiku sequence -- Grandchild -- Retrospect -- Branwell Brontë -- Evan -- The Lebanese flag -- Te pokohiwi -- Riflemen -- Death of a finch -- A rooster for Asclepius -- Hirsute -- Down beat -- Enhancing manhood -- Oration -- Bishop to square -- Watcher on the shore -- Dog winds -- Freeze frame -- Possum -- Crossing duty -- Straight road home -- Biblio interruptus -- Fog wall -- Neighbour -- Crouchback -- Habit -- Celebrity -- Academia -- Tortoise and hare -- Felix -- Second thoughts -- Common knowledge -- Relativity -- Personality -- On reflection -- Love requited -- Symposium -- The familiar -- Balloon and double decker bus -- Name calling -- Currency -- Fellowship -- Lethologica -- Aztec days -- Evening -- Driving with the Big O -- Small child on a trampoline.

Delving both into 'the worlds of the mind' and 'where he happens to be,' Owen Marshall brings us poetry that is steeped in the Classics, history, and literature, and yet is alive with the vivid particulars of damp duffle-coats and hot-air balloons, beer and bicycles, willows and skylarks, kauri gum and limestone tunnels. Marshall's work, taut with aphorisms and mining the philosophical, is nevertheless understated and wry. It is as likely to explore the nature of enduring love and the sacrifices made to adhere to a personal morality, as it is to delight in the image of a small child's animal elan on a trampoline. With a crisply erudite vocabulary, yet a direct and lucid manner, Owen Marshall takes us from Gorbio to Nelson, from Turkey to St. Bathan's, from Richard III to resentful schoolboys on detention, from intimate endearments to a portrait of the disillusioned guy in a pub cover band. Marshall's dry, even acerbic, humor and verbal control effect a keen-eyed watch on any melancholia and despair that grow out of staring too long into the fire of human folly.