Justum et tenacem propositi virum.
      HOR. ‘Odes’, iii. 3. I.


  The man of firm and noble soul
  No factious clamours can controul;
  No threat’ning tyrant’s darkling brow
    Can swerve him from his just intent:
  Gales the warring waves which plough,
    By Auster on the billows spent,
  To curb the Adriatic main,
Would awe his fix’d determined mind in vain.

  Aye, and the red right arm of Jove,
  Hurtling his lightnings from above,
  With all his terrors there unfurl’d,
    He would, unmov’d, unaw’d, behold;
  The flames of an expiring world,
    Again in crashing chaos roll’d,
  In vast promiscuous ruin hurl’d,
  Might light his glorious funeral pile:
Still dauntless ’midst the wreck of earth he’d smile.

Carstairs  had been waiting for the boat for three days and there it was, suddenly appeared. He had dozed and it had appeared. He trained his binoculars on it, but it was too far away to be clearly recognisable. It seemed motionless, becalmed in a sheet of unruffled water.
 
He had dug himself into a bank in the sandhills. He still had a little water, some raisins; there was a final cube of chocolate carefully wrapped in the whole of its paper. It was the thought of this hidden pleasure that had sustained him during the hours of darkness when the slight rain and the chill of inactivity had forced him to exercise, to move about, though always afraid he would lose his burrow.
 
From the earliest light of dawn the day had been clear and still. The sea birds had muted calls, the sea itself more a presence than a sound. The tide had steadily retreated beyond his expectations. He knew he had to wait for the arranged signal.
 
Turning on his back he looked at the sky. A few clouds floated hesitantly in the glazed blue. He remembered suddenly a moment from his childhood,       above the beach at Red Point. He had escaped his parents, his adored sisters, and hidden himself in the marran grass. He had lain on his back and felt himself levitate into the clouds. He had looked down on the whole scene, a waking dream. Those moments floating above the long Highland beach had never left him. Sitting in the examination hall for his Tripos that memory had come upon him; he had been paralyzed by it, unable to write or think. He had closed his eyes and strange geometrical shapes had ensnared him. He had felt extremely sick . . .and then very calm. He had returned to the task in hand, a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, that opening passage describing Eurus, Zephyr, Auster and Boreas: the four winds.
 
. . . he felt something wet nuzzle his hand. A dog, a black shape no more. As he struggled to move himself a larger shape obliterated the sun and shot him.

So you had a conversation with god
Which one?
One of the sun?
Perhaps one of wind?
Several of those have spoke to me
Africus spoke first and told me of his heat
Amaunet said "I will chill you from head to feet"
Then came time I met
Auster, who said nothing at all, but belched out a cloud
Zephyrus came very early one spring
and spoke to me so loud,
"I mentioned you to other winds and they are on their way"
I have met with many gods
Which did you meet today?

You asked,
"What if my Sunday has passed?
That the week was all I had,
and I messed it up so bad."

And in cognition,
I ungripped my neck.
I saw a counterpart — I was not the only one.

I knew how it was, to dangle by the jagged pier.
And you knew how it was to choke by disregard,
that floating was impossible with a punctured heart.

When each door meant nothing —
used and crossed out in your likeness.
Where I waited for the Sun,
but my windows stay boarded up.

You scraped bottom until my first word fell.

I said,
"I am a prisoner. And I am the prison."
You said,
"I am a cage, with nothing breathing inside."

I was alone. And you were alone.
And then we were alone together.

You unpicked my fearful lips,
for my throated echoes.
And I reminded you that you
are the reason that beauty exists.

Of the endless books we read,
Auster, Hesse, McCullers, Graves,
we still found ourselves
written on the same page.

Our tattoos were marked like scars —
another hopeless attempt
to speak with ink.
Why not mar the skin,
if we lose only grace?
I used to believe perfection was false,
for I had never seen your face.

You pointed out
my large feminine hands.
Then with your modest fingers,
you screened the chuckles.
And all I pictured from that endearing sight —
my effeminate hands, sheltering yours that frigid night.

No longer living in a future that was all talk.
No longer imperfect — for our scars sat perfect with.

We found Sunday.

I am not alone. And you are not alone.
And we are never alone together.