David Harsent

fythynesse, rust, menstrue, swylle, mannys durt, adders egges, the brede of lyes …...

The city was still smouldering end to end. We buried the dead, then, at twilight, went down to the beach and set tables for the victory feast. When Helen lifted her glass, the bracelets rattled on her wrist. ‘Listen to that,’ she said, ‘I must be dead.’

At once a piercing white light shone out from her mouth and all within its range was...

for Christopher Penfold

Sun on the sea running white, sun on white walls, yes, on the thick shoulders of the fishermen as they fanned their nets, sun

as an engine, a trapdoor, a compass, Democritus in his cell the window framing sea and sky, blue climbing on blue, a glaze

shaken by the heat, as she drifted in and held heavy in the thickening air. It was this: a...

Your book is Summer by Edith Wharton. A smell off the garden of something becoming inedible. Between sleeping and waking, no real difference at all.

There’s music in this, there would have to be: a swell of strings and bells becoming inaudible, note by note, before you latch on to it . . . The girl

in the story won’t prosper, that’s easy enough to tell....

Out by the woodpile at 3 a.m., knock-kneed and shitfaced, lost in your own backyard, you pour a libation that comes straight from the dregs and she drinks it.

Or you stand at a sinkful of broken this and that wide-eyed and with nary a hint of what’s next, as she goes by with her Tesco bags and a fifth of gin in her pocket.

She keeps unholy hours. There’s a chance you’ll see...