The Book, Behind the Dune is a long unitary poem about the birth of a poetic consciousness and its development in a world marked by the discovery of beauty, eroticism and the reality of evil. Influenced by St. Augustine, The Cloud of Unknowing and Wordsworth's The Prelude, the poem, full of literary, artistic and philosophical references, is simultaneously a meditation on the meaning of time and its manifestations-its epiphanies-in a concrete life. The reflection on historical time leads the poet to the reality of "the pain of the world," but also towards a world that is incessantly and continually beginning. As Yves Bonnefoy puts it, "Sanchez Robayna knows what 'the new time' expects of us which Rimbaud foresaw as 'very severe'." The Book, Behind the Dune (El libro, tras la duna), already translated into French, Italian, Czech, German and Arabic, is presented here for the first time in English.

Translated by: Louis Bourne
Introduction by: Yves Bonnefoy