Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following magazines where some of these poems appeared for the first time: Field, Gown, Harper's, Harvard Magazine, Honest Ulsterman, Ireland of the Welcomes, Irish Times, London Review of Books, Numbers, Ploughshares, Poetry Book Society Supplement, Poetry Ireland Review, The Scotsman, Seneca Review, Threepenny Review, Times Literary Supplement, Verse.
Nine of the poems appeared in Hailstones (Gallery Press, 1984).
An earlier version of the sequence 'Clearances' was published in a limited edition by Cornamona Press in 1986.
'From the Republic of Conscience' was published as a pamphlet by Amnesty International, Irish Section, on Human Rights Day, 1985.
'Alphabets' was the Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard University in 1984.
'Parable Island' was written for William Golding and included in William Golding, The Man and his Books: A Tribute on his 75th Birthday (Faber and Faber, 1986); 'The Disappearing Island' was first read at a dinner for Tim Severin organized by the St Brendan Society.