A book of poems, this is Michael Ondaatje's first since "The Cinnamon Peeler". The poems are about love, history and landscape that transport us with imagery to the poet's first home, Sri Lanka. They are reminiscent both of Japanese Haiku and of the ornately simple poetry of India, Persia and China. They combine the occasional familiar image of thought with others far more exotic, weaving in history, fairy-tale and the unfamiliar practicalities of a different hemisphere.