Among the characters encountered herein are a dying pope, a diligent hangman, a banker's daughter (who couples with the plumber), a young woman who would force her way into a library, a starving cat, children and the aged and the dead, a bridegroom who falls into sleep for 50 years, a death-row marriage pair, the snake and the lion, crocuses and forsythia. Silence, seasons, war, and love are all explained (or, it may be, clarified). Wordplay occasionally intrudes. The poems are organized into six categories: politics and war, nature, decay and death, love, scrutiny and introspection, words and books.