Provinces, Czeslaw Milosz's first book of poems since The Collected Poems (Penguin, 1988), continues his investigations into the urgent themes that have absorbed his work from the beginning. These poems are about what it is to be human in a world of provinces, shifting borders, conflict and crisis. From the perspective of old age - he is now 81 - he meditates on youth, mortality and the ways in which language and imagination can redeem the time. The poems are elemental, the rhythms assured, in these brilliant translations by the poet and Robert Hass. It is rare that a writer of Milosz's years should be producing such major work, peopled with biblical and literary characters, writers and scientists, youth and age. He gazes on a world in process of change, finding solace in compassion and beauty.