Drawing on Romany language, storytelling and the speech of birds, award-winning poet David Morley offers a provocative and passionate invitation to reflect afresh on the ways in which the lives, stories and fate of humans - and the more than human - are twinned and entwined.In poems that crackle with verbal energy, he invokes a world where God is Salieri to Nature''s Mozart, in which hummingbirds hover like actors ''in a theatre of flowers'', pipistrelles become piccolos, swans swerve comets, and a Zyzzyx wasp is ''a zugzwang of six legs and letters''. There are exuberant celebrations of Romany language in the style of Edward Thomas; of how a Yellowhammer inspired Beethoven''s Fifth Symphony; of the world-shaping discoveries of women scientists; and an autobiographical sequence, which roots this poet''s authority and reflects on how power shapes what may be said in public.