The title poem
Later Unearthed
discourses upon the inexorably preposterous House of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha, in the person of King George V. The tale of James Macpherson, who was catapulted into the belly of a whale, is just as odd, though sadder. Paul Magee has a sharp eye and musical ear, with a tone that is always fellow human. The middle sequence in the book,
Dreaming in Bourke
, is an account of time in the Barkindji town of Bourke, outback New South Wales, where cotton sucks the river dry, dragonflies mirror sunrise and floods lie in wait till they flood. There are translations from Silver and Medieval Latin, and a selection of modernist Russians, lamenting catastrophe or foreboding revolution.
Writing is a world
where oceans are tiny.