The Sea, The Sea

The Sea, The Sea

‘Every persisting marriage is based on fear,’ said Peregrine. Fear is fundamental, you dig down in human nature and what’s at the bottom? Mean spiteful cruel self-regarding fear, whether it makes you put the boot in or whether it makes you cower. As for marriage,...
The Wall

The Wall

Mornings on the Wall, dawn and dusk and night, were times for poetry. Skyconcretewaterwind. Afternoons were for prose. Ten thousand kilometres of Wall. A Defender for every two hundred metres: fifty thousand Defenders on duty at any time. Another fifty thousand on the...
Fire and Ice

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. And now you could...
Break It Down

Break It Down

And once she lay over against me late in the night and she started talking, her breath in my ear, and she just went on and on, and talked faster and faster, she couldn’t stop, and I loved it, I just felt that all that life in her was running into me too, I had so...
A House For Mr Biswas

A House For Mr Biswas

Every night he bolted himself in his room. As soon as he was still he felt the stillness around him and he had to make movements to destroy the stillness, to challenge the alertness of the room and the objects in it. He was rocking hard on the creaking board one night...