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examples of a new type of Gray lyric, when thesharp, apposite image one has come to expectis surprisingly varied and enlivened by theintroduction of rhyme and more regularrhythms. Another, "Harbour Dusk", shows howGray has taken a favourite subject of his andgiven it a new and completely individual life,even compared to such successful pieces as "TheDusk" (from Grass Script) and "Watching theHarbour" (from The Skylight):She and I had come wandering there throughan empty park,and we laid our hands on a stone parapet'sfading life. Before us, across the oily,aubergine darkof the harbour, we could make out yachts -beneath an overcast sky, that was mauveunderlit,against a far shore of dark, crumbling bush.Part of the city, to our left, was fruit shopbright.After the summer day, a huge moist hush.The yachts far across their empty fields ofwater.One, at times, was gently rested like a quill.They seemed to whisper, slipping amongsteach other;always hovering as though resolve were ill.Away off, through the strung Bridge, a skyof mulberryand orange chiffon. Mauve-grey, each clovensaillikenursing sisters, in a deep corridor: somemelancholy;or nuns, going to an evening confessional.Compared to "Watching by the Harbour", themelancholy mood is evoked with subtlety."Harbour Dusk" does not need to rely onaccumulated metaphors of changefulness andthe assertion of rather outlandish (for Gray)Jeremial rhythms to spell out its essentialmessage of transience. Here, the message is thedying fall and the melancholy mood created bythe pianissimo of the rhythm.Piano, although perhaps lacking some of thepassion of earlier observations such as "Flamesand Dangling Wire" and "The Meatworks",takes its mood from the title, and the poem,"Piano", sets the agenda in other ways."Piano" is a short Beckett-like piece ofmonologue, written, apparently, from the pointof view of an aging man who contemplates thepassing parade of youth and hence of life. Thusis set the mood of re-evaluation andchangefulness, but without making a majorWESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989statement. Formally, too, the poem is slight,composed of one and two word lines, and oneand two line stanzas. Hence the minor key is setas the book's dominant mode. The poem getsits effect musically by the repetition of key wordsand phrases in different thematic contexts,producing an incantory, steam of consciousnesseffect:afternoonpromenadelateafternoonclosinga wood gatepalingyardspromenadeIt is interesting to compare this poem to oneof the haiku inspired poems, "Eight Poems AfterKusadao", whose form is superficially similar, inorder to appreciate Gray's movement fromimagistic criteria towards a more musical stance:twothingsthat havenomemoriesfreshfallensnowaleapingsquirrelFinally, the piano, of course, can also beregarded as an instrument, which in itself, issuggestive of "play". In Piano one strongly gainsthe impression that Gray is consciously playingwith technique, playing new variations on oldthemes. Perhaps the keynote to the volume canbe found, appropriately, in the poem "AfterWriting All Day", which, again, is set by theharbour, where the poetry, like the light abovethe water "is an ornament, not yet crepuscular,/a baroque, passing into rococo goldenness ".In contrast to these short lyrics, the volumeends with a long discursive poem, "Under the107