TO begin at the beginning — such is the aim of the latest collection of poems by George Parker.

Downstream from Babel is his fourth, and, he says, final collection. In it, Tavistock writer Mr Parker reviews the 20th century but also delves further back to the past of Ancient Greece and an Earth nudging its first life forms into creation.

His thoughts on existence extend beyond those of mere mortals. In Autumn Leaves Drift Downstream he ponders on the brief life of a leaf which has no room/For sentiment. Because Time's meaningless for us who have no mind — a statement which neatly turns back on itself. If you have no mind how can you state that time is meaningless?

From that, Mr Parker switches to matters more brutal.

The poem James Connolly tells of the reluctant hero of Dublin's Easter Rising in 1916 who, because of injuries sustained in the fighting, was executed while tied to a chair.

Mr Parker wonders if Connolly's next of kin were invoiced for the cost of the chair Damaged by bullets/Exiting. Which is as good a way to end a poem as any.

In What Hope at Ypres and Passchendaele? He reflects — with a debt to Yeats' The Second Coming — on a human race that had crawled slowly from the ocean floor to reach its peak of consciousness to live like molluscs in the trench of war? But the poem ends on an optimistic note that from such a hell-hole man may yet strive for perfection.

What marks his work out is the variety of content. He is not stuck in a poetic rut. History, Geography. Geology, Mythology, Philosophy, all are embraced in the work of the prolific Mr Parker.

And if all that seems a little heavy going, fear not, his collection ends with a section entitled, In Lighter Vein. This is the way his work ends, not with a whimper but with a smile.

COLIN BRENT

l Downstream from Babel by George Parker is available at Tavistock's Book Stop, price £3.