In this delicate and rhythmical circumnavigation of tenderness, from a playground in Gaza to the sessions in John B. Keane's, from the fresh rubble of Dnipro to the thin tides of Courtmacsherry and the snowbound shores of the Shannon, Mooney unflinchingly stares down, draws out the acute, the calamitous, the desolate, while reaching ever into nature, to seed common sense and all-important hope.

nothing, no one can,

silence the rain's song

Here stands a poet of intense outrage and lyrical celebration, coaxing the ordinary into sharp focus - into extraordinary relief - in a world half-blind by apathy and hubris.

Paul Casey