John Burnside is a master of the unremarkable moment in which the abyssal nature of things is revealed. Whether it is the disturbing contemplation of a coyote's corpse by the roadside or the visit to the Berlin mirror cabinet with his son, where the self suddenly appears as a dwindling, grotesque figure. But it can also be that a fleeing hare darting across the vast fields leaves the poet speechless, open to the new. Burnside knows: What separates us from things is also that life which never belongs solely to us, which encompasses us until everything is a chorus.