Now, in slow, restive union, blackformed branches hoist up a rainflushed breeze, the sweep of fantastic arms shaking down batches of fattened drops which slice heavily into slochent soil. Now they pat and stroke the troubled air until it settles... quiets...

And still the rain appears downwards.

Into a huge, unvisible garden with all its fences down, unpicked by the cunning of liquid colonies. And this disclosure of darkness, these boles and burrows of a night all water, they are an epoch slipping; the husks of seconds tipped from the low wet void of the sky, whispering steadily through a grille of leaves their slight en masse resign.

Spill from the caught, quarantine lights of tenement windows glims only a few nervous feet into this Occupation. The rooms revealed are as caves carved into cliffs of ancient brick, each guardedly to its own self drawn, not sensing how the night laps at its ledge and steals a' the safety. The soaked, enduring walls reflect but faintly the night's much vaster ramparts which mountain endlessly upwards...give down from the high mind of nothing...

Its intimate rain.

A close and intense spitting from the allwide nightface onto another:

Goes clattering lonelily across an iron bridge some streets away, a train, while, nearer at hand, the clashing together of washed crockery sharpens the quadrangular dark. An expulsion of reluctant, indoor light exposes the feral crouch of nearby bushes by the gleam of their dripping leaves as a firstfloor window trundles awkwardly open, releasing into the wake working night a billow of earthly warmth. Comes drifting in medley from some balcony bower, the murmur of music, wine dreg and candlescent, and a woman's soft resuming voice urging some question of love's import. What seems like the russet and gold of pleasures exchanged descends like old dream into an exile soul, but then ^___at moody variance^___ a man leans out into the night his silhouette sigh.

And that was strange ^___the night, I mean. I had the feeling it was waiting for me; as though it had been raining patiently for hours and I was late. The gardens seemed darkly crowded, a sightless pit of instinct and industry, but still a clean sort of respite from the tense clutch of demand and resentment going on between me and Sheena. The air of her room had become unbreatheable from the ill-burnt fumes of non-expression that tightened our temples and hearts. I wanted something of the night's mudmaul reality; to be spattered and windrubbed till the core was pure. At the same time it felt boorish and dishonest to be standing with my back to Sheena and all our wretched mental luggage, and I was on the indrawn breath of turning back in when^______

It was as though the darkness opened ^___very locally^___ and a gigantic wink of silence grounded me to the night like a rod of iron. I could feel shoes settled into the soddy grass and the loud slapping of rain on a leaf beside my ear while, all above me, shadowed men lean out of windows with their subliminals dropped open.

Someone gasps

A sailor's excitement fills my chest, as at a breeze from the Unknown Shore, lureladen and unfearing. The night rises with me, dark as fur, unguent and gleaming with such hallowed falling; rises before, sweethumed and alert, to fan with its moist caressing breath. Then weighted raindrops from a sill above digging through the thin cloth of a shirt produce once more the thrill of human circumstance, and interior.

What a tiny, nutperfect haven of life, the room; its amber walls and the objects in it ^___exotic treasure-pots and jeweljars from which she pampers the rose tawn of her skin; the languorous lay of discarded clothes; faithful books en file shelved, and clock's tame ticking^___ all, all blooming and preening and seated so finely within their own forms. And ruling amid them with grace ^___SHEena! Sitting on the bed's edge with lamplight pouring into her redgowned lap, her fair, frowse-happy hair pluming the softsulken poise of her face.

Which is turned toward with question.

Which is unclear because of a sensation of violent inward buzzing at the same frequency as the thick golden light which swarms out of the lamp, itself melded with mute music leaking quietly from her radio's dimlit dial.

Does she say something?

There's not the power to answer, such the whelming sumptuour of this opening into the halls of dream, but windbreath sliding over wetted leaves outside seems like a cue, a dare, a quiet command, so that we're cranked down upon our knees before her, parting the skirts of her satin bedgown to lay this longing in the cleft of her lap; the smooth silkdown pod of it, smelling warmly of sweetgourd and talc...the forestdark rumour of its hidden court. And from that vail are sensed the spread pair chubs of her rear, heating their shapes in the rumpled sheets, and the slipper-me loll of loose breasts whose nipples perk out the shifting sheer of her robe.

Fingers twined among rough hair try gently to lift a burthen head. And words

But don't say. Say nothing. Only lie back, backed over the bed in resisting collapse, breathing a 'gainst of protest while manoeuvred downwards in a constrictive bunching of collarcaught clothing and hair uncomingdone amid a lue-dishevelment of furrowed sheet.

Her backed weight crushes from soft bedsoils an oestrous fume, perspirant of pits and hollows, of skin-to-skin's slight glue and the dumb dolphinsmile of limbs closed crease. We strain to take love from her lips but she turns ^___non-plus^___ her head away. Twice this, while trying upward, but so compelling the nuzzled lait of naked skin, so mustful this lowering of haird breadth upon the plumpid pads of her flattened breasts ^___although, no! She non-places her fore-fending arm against, groping otherhanded for the lost edges of her undone gown, interposing elbows and ineffect wrestling while panting a pressed ^___No^___ from darkened non-placid eyes and pleady hands, pushing against the houseweight of hips bullnestling down between.

There were sounds again afterwards: the nervous night, raining itself in a fidget of falling drops; wind sinking into a clutter of darkness. How, and why, O God! did I let that happen ^___did I do that? How could ^___stupid! Awful! I've never in my life ^___then sat up too quick too late in a strangled devastate of damn! unwishing regret, the stale disorder of the sheets irking my skin, the air heavy with fear and shame.

The hateful claustrophobia of that room.

Perhaps it would be alright, I thought. I would ^___of course! of course!^___ stay by her till the debt was paid, making what amends I could. I tried to frame excuses, to myself, to Sheena, for what had happened, (but what had happened?), wondering with a spike of self-loathing why there was so little in me between distance and violence; why I knew so much of apology, so little of love.

I flinched when I felt Sheena's hand on my arm, expecting anger, but her touch was soft and languid, and when I looked round I was shocked to see that she was smiling. Unprepared for gentleness, for forgiveness, I felt thoroughly confused, but my confusion deepened when I saw that she was not forgiving. Her hand rested on my arm with a kind of possessive acclaim, and in her eyes, soft and magnified, there was an expression of regard which I had never seen before. You were too rough, she said, as though more with concern for me than for herself. You frightened me at first.

I said nothing, (I might have smiled briefly because I am quick in disguise), but just groped for the trampled tubes of my trousers, rose, and went to the window. I felt relieved, yes, but also betrayed and jealous. Jealous that Sheena should have experienced something I could neither own nor recall, which I knew could never occur again. Buttoning my shirt, I felt a chill of age. I wondered how long it would be before she began to feel deprived and cheated; how long before I intercepted looks of pity and resentment. If only I could make her understand that ^___Sheena, you must discount it. Whatever happened here, or you think may have happened, it wasn't me. Don't leave me like this, alone with my own failings again. This thing wasn't real. It was...what? No, useless. Just too irrational for explanation; too unknowable. I reached up to shut the window.

Don't shut it, she said. Don't shut it, she softly repeated.

Outside, the rain fell and fell; piling up in a slushy morass of ruin and discomfort that I knew would never get sorted out. I leant out and felt the dank misery of that night lying over my whole life. For just a second ^___in a flurry of hard dripping and a brushing of foliage^___ I thought I sensed a movement, as of something escaping, stealing off into impenetrable wilderness, and I wanted to cry out ^___bring her back! Give her back, you infernal bastard!

You have plundered the structure of words and small memories I hoped would hold her. Now we can all only long for each other again.