This continuing prose poem attempts to come to terms with some of the most basic human experiences, from sex and language to the central place of light in our lives. Book V expands upon these obsessions, particularly the relationship between the body and the world and the experience of light; it adds a number of new ones as well. The failed artist is imagined as a consummate forger, expertly capable of mimicry, but wholly a fraud at any genuine work or feeling. A religious impetus, largely unstated until now, begins to be consecrated in this book with a series of short lyric poems concerning the redemptive qualities of love.