“Nil Nil”
The poem opens with the description of a soccer team that was once a powerhouse success, but over time became less successful. As the team’s fortunes fell, their success of old slowly faded from consciousness and was forgotten. This fall from grace becomes personified in the image of two small boys kicking a tennis ball as if it were a soccer ball. This image transforms into that of a fight-pilot whose plane is crashing to the ground in a horrific explosion that leaves almost nothing recognizable as a human body. There is a gallstone left, however, and one of the boys kicks it like a soccer ball into a gutter.
“Unicorn”
The speaker considers the concept of the unicorn as an animal which never actually existed and yet is. This paradox is attributed to the power of imagination to create something out of a love for the possibility of its existence and to nurture it into being with nothing but the hope that it might have been.
“Two Trees”
The first of this two-stanza poem describes a man named Don Miguel who grafted an orange tree to his lemon tree only to see no fruit borne from his labor for a whole year. But then suddenly the experiment beings to produce a bumper crop of both fruits. The second stanza describes how an unnamed man who later bought Don Miguel’s house did a very strange and inexplicable thing: he separate the orange and lemon trees from each other and instead of trashing them both, replanted them each about four yards apart. Unexpectedly, the result is not that the one or both trees died or even that they stopped producing fruit. They simply went on producing apples and oranges as nature intended separately but equally.
“The Rat”
A young poet has written a poem about the titular rodent that is universally recognized as the greatest poem ever written on that particular subject. An unidentified group referring to itself only as “we” writes to the poet but upon receiving no reply decide to sail to the island where he lives. They excitedly read his other poetry but find it lacking in comparison to the one about the rat so in response they overwhelm him with advice on how to write better poetry. Having done that, they then act in unison to make a single request: write more poems just like the one about the rat. To this they are once again met with utter silence.
“11:00 Baldovan”
Two young boys set off for the first time on a bus ride without the intrusive accompaniment of adults. As they set off, they count their money in excited preparation for the treats that await them in the city. Soon enough, however, anxiety sets in with palpable worries about having enough money for return fare or being left off in a completely different country where nobody will know what they are talking about. By the time they return home their sisters and mothers have been dead for half a century.
“The Rain”
The speaker describes how he loves any movie that begins with a scene in which it is raining. This love extends to a torrential downpour right from the beginning to more intimate scenes. Such is his love of rainy scenes that it can even make him overlook flaws like bad acting or technical glitches.
“The Wreck”
One-half of a former romantic couple recalls the intensity of the love affair through an extended imagery of taking a boat out from port and diving down together beneath the surface of the water as the boat sits moored by an anchor.
The speaker begins with a somewhat horrific what-if premise: how can one be content landing safely aboard an airplane when there is always still present the possibility that they will arrive home to find their house in flames or their spouse kidnapped. The mere act of sitting along in a locked room is filled with unknown perils presenting unforeseen dangers. This imagery leads to the premise of the poem: the titular lover is the only person alive who meets everything life has to thrown at them with the joyous freedom of not caring about the dangers that ever-present at any single moment.
“The Ferryman’s Arms”
A man in a pub equipped with a half-pint of Guinness finds himself mesmerized by darkened room in the back of the bar. There awaits inside a coin-operated pool table. The game of pool is transformed into a Bergmanesque game of chance with Death himself. Imagery from ancient Greek myth informs the title of the poem as a boat sudden chugs into the frame at the beginning of the second stanza, a symbolic reference to the ferry which transports dead souls across the river Styx into Hades. The speaker is split into two, one leaving the other behind, still playing, practicing for his next meeting game with mortality on the line.
