Tsaloumas is not a poet of the migrant experience. He does not evoke nostalgia for a homeland out of some experience of anguish as a stranger in a foreign culture. He defies such narrow limits. If some of his poetry refers to his homeland it is within the broader framework of nostalgia, of a feeling of loss or rejection, of Mneme.

His poetry in this collection encompasses a multiplicity of subject matter and style. He looks at the past through what remains of it in time present, yet time present in its own right cannot retrieve the past (‘Morning Start’). He avoids prophesying about the future, which he says is the domain of the representatives of the people with their brassy voices – politicians. He precludes the possibility of a vision of the future being created conclusively by looking through the “lookouts” of today or the past. He might well say, leave that to the enigmatic oracles and the exhortations of the politicians – to Messianism.