AS two lovers lie upon a shore the sun of justice passes overhead and observes their consummation. There is only one narrative in the world of time and human effort which we attempt to apprehend and to imitate in all our works and WINDWARD is a book about this voyage and how it is that the lovers arrived where they are now, following the circuit of the annual year, its ritual metaphors and images. Whether we admit it or not we are all lovers and each pursues that same one genius of life.

For those who can love - all at once - the words of Homer, of Sappho, of English renaissance verse and of Shakespeare, of Cavafy, of Seferis, of some anonymous woman whose singing of unrequited love is accidentally overheard by a passerby in some remote Greek village, the poetry of Kevin McGrath will bring unforgettable delight to both the heart and the mind.

Gregory Nagy Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University

Kevin McGrath is a rare poet of penetrating vision, attentive always to the ebb and flow of life, to beginnings, turnings, and endings, to the meeting places of sea and land, shore and horizon, to the thin and translucent places where light shines through the worlds of nature. His words bring love and light to days and nights, seasons and years, birth and death.

Diana Eck Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Master of Lowell House, and Director of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University