Numbered as Sand or the Stars is a sewn hardcover, limited to 235 hand numbered copies, 62 pp with illustrated end papers, a full-color frontispiece, two-colour text, illustrated canvas boards. Budapest, 1946: a devastated city in a conquered country where hyperinflation is running out of control. In a room high above the ruins a man sits reviewing his life. From his childhood in Transylvania to his activities in Admiral Horthy’s Hungary, he recalls the part he played in the secret history of some of the pivotal events of the interwar years. But is he alone? Who – or what – might be helping him to remember? And what are the stories that he, in turn, is told?

At Dusk is a sewn hardcover, limited to 235 hand numbered copies, 120 pp with illustrated end papers, a full-color frontispiece, two-colour text, illustrated canvas boards. In Belgrade, a young teacher writes jagged Gnostic canticles; in Tbilisi, an old visionary is taken to an asylum. The white dust rises on summer roads; the black leaves of autumn await. The magisters of literature sense the twilight steal upon them; and even young dreamers see shadows upon their path. Some say they are in the last days of Europe. It is certain the known world is shimmering on the brink. And at dusk, things change . . . Mark Valentine’s At Dusk is a homage to the vanquished and lost voices of the poets of interwar Europe, in a powerful form of his own. Contents I. Cavafy His Visiting Cards Are Faded II. Bacovia Always the Crows III. Kerestedjian (Lubin) Among Strange Streets IV. Kolmar Their Strange Beasts V. Milov A Lantern Head VI. Czechowicz The White Dust VII. Reverdy This Subtle Impress VIII. Dizdar A Searcher of Stones IX. Paavolainen Ensombred X. Radnoti A Sly Angel XI. Desnos The Hatless Strangers XII. Antoniou The White Chariots XIII. Veli Some Mustard XIV. Van Ostaijen Gnostic Comedian XV. Saba A Boy on a Gate XVI. Pessoa Black Lilies XVII. Ulinover Sabbath Candles XVIII. Espanca She Called Saudade Her Sister XIX. Machado These Footfalls XX. Nezval The Umbrellas of Prague XXI. Jacob The Rose Chasuble XXII. Pagan Vagabond The Tramp of Eternity XXIII. Marsman The Black Boat XXIV. Antonych The Other Tongue XXV. Kosovel No More Need Be Said XXVI. Zollinger The Incense of Artemis XXVII. Talvik The Blighted Leaves XXVIII. Nastasijevic The Epitaphs of Moments XXIX. Riff Chanted By Azariah XXX. De L. Milosz The Sunset is a Salamander XXXI. Meerbaum-Eisinger She Walked in the Twilight of Czernowitz XXXII. Galaktion He Consorted With Seraphs XXXIII. Char To Respire is to Revolt XXXIV. Onofri Exquisite Orphist XXXV. Ziemelnicks Poppy-haunted

I am not given to the task of writing. I have read too much—and always of the most horrific of deeds—to find in the written word much solace from, or reason for, the ultimate madness of the world. Rather, my life has been a quest for things, and their magical and bountiful properties; qualities that, if one is attentive enough, reveal themselves through years of subtle relationships and quiet correspondences. In short, objects are, to me, the truth of this existence, and its only proper means of record—or indeed, value. For within a cherished antique or long discarded toy, one finds a pulse of love and loathing, of betrayal and trust. It seems they speak always—in their wooden, stony, eternal ways—of a kind of fellowship of mankind, and of its brutality—of truth, of life! Whereas literature, pale deceitful shadow,is a dead world, populated by the unborn, its cities built by the distorted bricks of aberrant imagination and mortared by the indolence of poetry. It is an onanist’s daydream—what can be, will be—for me—before my very eyes! Pah, keep your little fantasies, they feed only the minds of the depraved, or heap more dust upon the shelves of the academics! Herein you will find some seeds, of Agrostemma Coronaria, Calla Æthiopica, Lilium Pomponium, and Campanula Carpatica. They may flourish. You will find some people; Hieronymus L., Stefan H., Agnieszka T., and Dr Anvar Z. They may wither. You will find some things; a peepshow box, a Russian doll, a suitcase, a speculum. They can never die!