It is fascinating to read poems that have journeyed from a language very much of one relatively small nation, into a language that has spread over the world, understood by many, the language of the computer and of exported mass entertainment. In these pages, both the poetry and the distance it has had to travel are palpable. In the crudest, most obvious way, such journeys, in both directions, are vital to the smaller of the two languages. But on a deep level the reverse is true: here are voices from a vital crossroads of cultures, different from and older than the intersections we know. A different coherence, a different chemistry.