We are always in the middle of life, looking forwards and backwards; the only movement we can make to defy physics and history is the journey of the spirit. The Ishtar Gate, a ceremonial gate from the palace of Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon, reconstructed and housed in the Staatliche Museum, Berlin, is my personal symbol for the merging of ancient and modern culture, the old goddess-centred religions and the scholarly, rational West. So wrote Diana Brebner of the book she planned to write. Though cancer claimed her life before she could complete this project, she wrote some thirty poems towards it.Here is a poet in extreme control of her craft: the aesthetic refinement, the musicality of language, the spiritual vision, and the playfulness that drew readers to Brebner's previous award-winning books - Radiant Life Forms, The Golden Lotus, and Flora & Fauna - resonate with even greater force in her last poems.