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“... Sue Lenier’s poems occupy 70 closely printed pages, of which I have read – the things I do for LRB! – 50 or so. If ‘read’ is the word for what one does, or can do, with language like this: Mourn no more for the flowers you have broken, Lies you have told and clouds stirred on my face Roused from my dark to the moons you have awoken, In this fair night your blackness keeps no place, When Winter holds her blue tongue to the trees Licking them white, they cry not at their death With tears like wings of flies washed in the breeze And blown away, each sad and lonely breath, And as each creature waits for Spring’s pale arms To rouse their sleep and tenderly lead them out, So I to you who did me all this harm Will wait, heart-full, to wake you with my shout  Of happiness, love and trembling sin –  As all the night goes out, the stars come in ...”

“... thought, And as for sleepy listening civilians – They symbolise the acquiescent millions. The Sue Lenier episode in Cambridge finds him poking gentle fun at love-struck dons where Donald Davie thought it necessary to call up the heavy moral artillery. Soon after comes a couplet which would fit into a poem by Pope: The hoses gush, the truncheons rise ...”