The moon and the black leaves. I am smelling it out. The bright day is done. My slow dying dead, my dead dying slow, so long in its tooth. That’s the character of it, gentlemen. I am in a nunnery. He has managed to banish me. What he hoped and what he feared. Oh very near the mark. The who? That’s beside the point. Which is quite another thing, distinct, shall I say, from the main issue, from the one pressing and deplorable conundrum. A country train will take you there. I have taken the hint. Shame on all things. I am a bat. He wasn’t free with his booze. That did it. I shall throw my hand in. Chuck it all in. Scrub round it. Under stealth I lived, under stealth I’ll leave. A new order. The fires. The land is black. There’s a blackness on my lids. I am blind. And now you have come, now at this time have found it is time, it is no longer so. I am cold with the years of you. You came to me in that garden. I told you I was cold. You knew what I said. I am a bat. I must not be a bat.
