A dead tree full of live birds, by Lionel Abrahams

Lionel Abrahams's fourth collection seems to have death and deity as leading motifs, but in fact what he offers is a humanistic affirmation of life and meaning. The shadow of mortality sends him searching for a light capable of nullifying it.

The non-mystical answer he finds (and doubts and loses and re-finds repeatedly) lies in forms of human connectedness: art, books, language, mankind's historical pursuit of truth and under-standing, the individual's discovery of his own likeness in others far and near, past and present, and, of course, the bonds of love, sympathy,

tenderness and admiration between individual and individual. Thus, the frequent acknowledgment of the 'dead tree' in these poems becomes the pretext for insisting on the enduring wonder of the 'live birds' - whether in the forms of creativity, courage, compassion, passion, insight, conversation, play or laughter, or of the whole astonishing phenomenon of Life's flowering between the Big Bang and black holes - and celebrating it.