Collected Poems

Peter 'Ken' Leonard was born in Sandymount, Dublin, in 1923 and lived in Dublin all his life apart from a few years which he spent in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire following his marriage in 1958. He died in 2003 following a short illness. The poems collected in this book were composed over a period of 60 years or so. It has not been possible to establish a precise chronological sequence, but I have tried as far as possible to present them in their order of composition. The publication of this book constitutes an important literary event: poems like "Giacometti", "The stars in their courses", "Just When" and many others deserve to be read and cherished, now that they are finally available in print. Taken as a whole, this collection marks the addition of a significant new voice to the canon of Irish verse written in the twentieth century.

Table of Contents:
There is distinction between 9 Because the leaping hour 10 New Year's Eve - Christchurch Cathedral, 1942 12 The Princess 13 O Weather 15 Alter Ego 17 The liquid air shimmers 18 Another Helenus 19 Declension by Declension 21 Mailboat 23 We, who trek 25 Beside the fountain 26 Ces Nymphes 27 Legend 29 Cain 32 She sat in a corner window seat 34 The horizon heart 36 Howth Head and Bailey Light 38 No angelic reproof 41 Once 42 Epithalamion 44 The Rose of Gloucester 46 Elizabethan Sonnets 48 Apology for a sixties spring 49 Public library, Cheltenham 54 The Crux 56 Studies on the theme of Paganini 58 Plage Privee I & II 59/60 Piano recital, Cheltenham 62 Christmas in Cheltenham 64 December Sonnets 66 Giacometti 68 Once upon a rhyme 70 Folk dance 72 Acknowledging the gift of a young friend's painting 73 Boots 75 Trinity exhibition 77 Maisonettes 79 Derry - Two poems 85 Sutton yacht club 88 A clapping of shutters 90 The Rock 91 The stars in their courses 93 Druid's corner, Whiterock 95 IF 97 Derry Walls 98 Motes in the sunlight moving 99 The earth, prolific spouse 100 How perilous to be Perillus 101 Lament for the Caryatids 102 Hindus revere the deodar 103 Taiga! Taiga! 104 A friend of my friend's friend 105 A Christmas carol 106 Ere time 108 Out of ancestral chaos 110 The glazed look 112 What the Butlers saw 113 Die Schelten 117 Aristarchus of Samos 118 Helix 119 Now that the summer's surfaced 121 Triality 123 Just when 124 Reconstructing Yeats 126 Rhodalind 128 Train to Ulan Baator 130 The realm of the Russian bear 131 Tract three 132 NOX 134 Terce 136 Lines for a Christmas card 137 Petals 138 Puer 139 The loneliness of the electron 140 Charles Bukowski 142 The mad machinist 143 Ball - ended magnet 145 A candle 147 Apercu 148 Jornada Del Muerto 149 Tract two 151 Auctumnalis 152 Birthday Poem 153 Look at me kindly 154 Unamuno 156 April comes 157 E.P. XXII footnote to letter no.8 of St. Augustine 158 Time was 159 Homage to Tertullian 160 The harrow on the bullfrog's back 161 The cycles of the sun 162 Where quirks outnumber quarks 163 The knot within the tree 164 The parent 165 Winter cherry 167 The tether stack at Dunhill 168 DIP 169 The repetend of Pi 170 I dwell upon men 171 Oh I could scan you songs 172 The glider from the train 174 Aesculus Hippocastanum 175 Samuel Beckett 177 Hilton Edwards 179 Alex Trocchi 180 Takeo Sato 181