I had no way of desiring you except
That you should be there, standing under the vines

In the grey of morning, work not yet begun.
I thought that you belonged with the early light,

Calm, uninsistent. But when the sun came up,
Edging above the hill-crest, blackening the bill,

The liveliness hidden in you, quick and sharp,
Made you one with the first beams needling the air

Lusus is the Latin word for 'diversions', an appropriate title for this volume of classical poems, rooted in physical experience and in the occluded tradition of neo-Latin verse-writing, with its erotic and rural themes. The humanist allegiance in these poems transcends national boundaries. It is an allegiance, first of all, to language itself.

The 'Monte Gennaro Epigrams' at the heart of Lusus, composed in exacting hendecasyllabic pentameters, explore a hill-landscape in central Italy and find in it metaphors for language and inherent forms of civility. The 'derelict ways' suggest an ideal, a 'hidden city' to be inferred from greetings, gestures, phrases, a city which might actually exist, to be returned to or rediscovered.

Lusus ranges from youth to middle age. The scrupulousness of language and of feeling gives the poems a rare intensity.