Even now the name runs along my spine, squeezing every muscle - undulates from the ear, and slips past all rationalisation - and I hunger to make something of it.

This is not a new story. Someone who vaguely knew Plato, and Socrates before him, had as his talent the seeking of honey - an unlearned aptitude he would or could not share. None of us ever knew where he went once his figure sank below the crestline of the nearby ridge; but he always came back with the combs, always.

Even if I have the will to reach the crest, I know, only trees will be visible to me - all lined up and ready to be used, by one beast or another.

What might be an old ode

There is nothing you write that cannot be traced back to you.

This is my conviction, and I am more convinced of it the more we are entwined. One day, some day, you will not be able to keep 'me' from 'us'. If I am not already in your dense and intercrossing lines I might be soon. Or perhaps I am in those lines, but only as the grit that will be dusted off by the time the publisher tells me 'yes'. To him I present you, but you have already straightened your blouse and sweater, you stand smiling at the door, alone.

There are some senses whose reports and verdicts might come back unadulterated, again and again, as each person sees or each hour departs. But there are others which depend on the air, which recognise no lines or angles but only a space, which those signals they are attuned to will do everything to fill, even at the cost of all their own clarity. And you sit, catching every sound as your name describes, and giving nothing - not the sound of eating a sandwich, not even the sound of breathing.