Why make an effort to have a collection of poems published in book form? Well, for one thing, it's a family tradition. My mother did it, and so did my father. Neither made much impact at the time, nor are their books still in print. So it would seem vanity, in both senses of that word, to copy them. Nevertheless, I feel a strong urge to follow their examples, even if it proves in vain. Firstly, as signs of impending death begin to multiply, I want to leave something behind after I have gone. Over the years I have turned a lot of food into faeces, and I would like to demonstrate in some sense that it hasn't all been used up merely in staying alive.

For that wish to be more than self-delusion, the thing left behind would have to be worth a lot more than human excrement. I do believe that the compositions collected here have some value, that they are contributions to one of humanity's great long-term projects, namely the making of art. Whether these contributions are genuinely worth keeping is for others to judge, but if they perish with me, that judgement won't even happen.
I pin my hopes on a few signs that some of the contents here might strike a spark in future readers. Some of these poems have been published and some have elicited positive comments from a variety of people. So I permit myself to hope that many readers will find in this book at least one poem that does speak to them, perhaps even a poem that they would want to share with others.

Many of these poems contain autobiographical elements, but others are pure flights of fancy. Poetry is not reportage, and this book is not an autobiography. On this point I agree with Picasso: art is a lie that makes us realize the truth. (Or, I would say, an aspect of truth.)

The poems are ordered chronologically, with the most recent first. Over more than 66 years I have kept a folder, then a computer file, of my verses with dates attached. Some poems are indeed finished within a day, so dating is unproblematic. Others support the contention that a poem is never finished, only abandoned (Paul Valery via W.H.Auden). In such cases, it is usually obvious when the last non-trivial amendment was made, and I record that as the date of the whole composition.

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