A landmark work dedicated to the author's partner, this set of linked poems explores love and loss through the lens of myth, faith, and art. Heavily influenced by the work of C. P. Cavafy, Plante's paen to his beloved will stay with readers long after the last verse.

David Plante (born 1940) made his name as a novelist with his first book, The Ghost of Henry James (1970), then with a dozen other novels including the Francoeur Trilogy (1978-82)–The Family, The Woods, and The Country–a story of the complex relations within a family and between the family’s French-Canadian culture and the New England Anglophone world around them. He made his name as memoirist with Difficult Women (1983), about his vexed and deep friendships with Jean Rhys, Sonia Orwell, and Germaine Greer, then with Becoming a Londoner (2013) and Worlds Apart (2015), both rich in gossip and in psychological insight about famous and infamous figures in the literary and artistic worlds. He now lives in Lucca, Italy.