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You had kept to yourself too longthat dull knot in the guttill it became engorgedand had, with its tightening hold upon you,with large affected sections, to be excised.Even if it had been the LordGod himself that had his hands in . . . .you were too much closed off by your pain,revulsion at prune-like changeand easy befouling of unhealing fleshto cope . . . . Closed off in tissue and in bonefrom all access, each day, you said,you sensed your end to be more fearful -taking you whole up to chest and face,tight, airless, like newly tamped-down earth.Outside, the growing heat of morningbeat back for a whilethat encroaching ring of darknesswhich, behind the eye,was caught up in its own fierce winds.Intending little else than body's ease,how would you,when the haze thickened, be set? -so as not to face the wrong wayand make toward the heart, the originof such thick banks of dustthrown up so high, so blackas to make all light clot -even thatwhich streamed from the clearest, the most effulgent sun.I left you with your unbuttered breakfast toast,your watery Milkmaid milk,having agreed your doctors might well sayit was nothing that was moredangerous than stomach ulcer after all.WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989 13