Those familiar with the spiritual poetry of Gordon Walmsley know that he writes like an angel. This does not mean sweetness and light. Rather, this means a voice, or voices, which use words as DNA fragments: alive; runic; beautiful; unprotected; on a quest – parallel, or not, to the poet’s own quest. Companions, certainly, words and the poet. Risk, without a trace of stress. ‘Braille’ here implicates sight, sound, smell, touch, taste. The book is in fact not a collection, it is one continuous poem. Elements expand and contract, interpenetrate translucently: vastness and detail (‘an Irish blanket makes the chair better’); I, you, he, she, it, they. Flashes, too, of other poets (are they really there?): the pre-Socratics, Vaughan, Dickinson, others. Other flashes, of 2018: ‘terrorists’, ‘money.’ The poet urges his listeners (who are they? himself? the reader? the sea? death?) to concentrate, because voices, whether internal or external, are only aids to the heart.