‘I heard a scratching. Jon was casting round, clearing a mental circle; or not collecting. He was an odd sort of bird, plucking subliminal debris, imperfectly weaving whatever came to bill.’ Jon is an Englishman Madrid, in fact—and indefinitely. An anarchist and Hispanophile, he has no faith in his nation nor plan to return. Yet to any observer, he is stubbornly, old-fashionedly English; pinned, indeed, to the language, as his only means of breadwinning. In the sometime company of his chronicler, he roams the city, lunching, talking, smoking, drinking—sleeping, finally—between the fallen stools of recollection and loss. Five Separable Sleeps is a serious a light religious gesture, to suit few tastes or people’s cup of tea. "Robert Duncan is a one-off, with an endless facility for gesture and play. This starts like a baroque staging of Samuel Beckett, by student hobbledehoys and old thesps, but so stylish are its episodes that they cleave to the memory. Just as it makes a modern rebuild of a burnt palace flame into convincing religious impulse, you find – faced with language you don’t know – that you learn it." Professor Christopher Harvie