This collection of fifty-two poems from the author of Angel Fire and Anonymous Sins explores the annihilation of the time-bound ego, a liberating, sometimes terrifying experience for all who live within the ""fabulous beast"" of history and nature. The poems explore the shifting, elusive point at which the inwardness of individual experience touches upon the larger consciousness of a species or an era, forming a connection with a ""self"" that goes beyond subjectivity.

The poems are grouped into four parts: ""Broken Connections,"" ""Forbidden Testimonies,"" ""The Child-Martyr"" and ""A Posthumous Sketch,"" are prose poems which, though technically different from the others, are concerned with the same theme, the relationship between the individual and a larger, all-inclusive whole. Neither fatalistic nor rebellious, the poems convey the idea that as long as we live in time we must struggle, and that is this struggle that determines our humanity.