1 ‘Dublin under sea-fog, dreeping weather…’ 9
2 ‘Look me up, with the blind, the lame and the halt…’ 10
3 ‘Overnight snow in the east…’ 11
4 ‘Tell me, does anyone ever get blind drunk…’ 12
5 ‘How to survive the dangerous Dublin stretch… 13
6 ‘The envelope, bright yellow or bright blue… 14
7 (Death of an Editor) 15
8 ‘The man in here, demanding time and silence…’ 16
9 ‘When you emerge from the other end of books…’ 17
10 ‘They frighten me slightly, those nice boys and girls…’ 18
11 ‘Who was it said we’re born in the second act?’ 19
12 (To the singer Freddie White) 20
13 ‘Linoleum, yellow light…’ 21
14 ‘Rogue narcissus, how did you get in there…’ 22
15 ‘Clouds, too, are incoming information…’ 23
16 ‘What feeds the secret sources?’ 24
17 ‘Is there a lockkeeper here, who understands…’ 25
18 ‘These are the days that March has lent to April…’ 26
19 ‘Crunch of a car, in the gravelled yard below…’ 27
20 ‘Not for us high priesthood, Dan and I…’ 28
21 ‘With Jeremiah’s lamentations sung…’ 29
22 ‘The Pope and Rainier dead, Saul Bellow dead…’ 30
23 ‘Dim snugs, in coloured little towns…’ 31
24 ‘People I meet, on the blind wheel of fortune…’ 32
25 ‘I have it in mind, North African gentlemen…’ 33
26 ‘Sitting still, or hurtling through the noosphere…’ 34
27 ‘Weeping, I feel better…’ 35
28 ‘“‘I saw an extraordinary thing, the other day…”’ 36
29 (For Marina, who cut my hair) 37
30 ‘Ask yourself, as you struggle with your pen…’ 38
31 (The Night Bakery) 39
32 ‘High up here, in the northern latitudes…’ 40
33 ‘Water is there to be looked at, not looked into…’ 41
34 ‘Today I have been a good boy…’ 42
35 ‘Even Christ, in his unrecorded years…’ 43
Epilogue: William Bates, 1931–2013 45
