Geoffrey Hill is a moralist, and his subject is pain - the suffering of man at the hands of man. He judges us all - for the enormities of this sordid century and our cowardly responses to them, for our lack of self-understanding, for our inability to acknowledge what is properly owed the dead. He judges us for our failings, but he judges himself more fiercely. He prays for divine forgiveness, and for the grace that we need to begin to forgive ourselves.