I took you there; you hated it – the steep uncertain climes (and sloping glades of grain) which turned from diamanté lens to drear in clicking like an oaken farmhouse door. -It was no stream of sun – but skewing cloud And no-one seemed to know quite how it came to be so dark, or why it stayed so long The landscape threatened violence that day- as solar flowers threw their manes around with total disregard; the screaming slaves in chain-gang rows. A million beating fists would shatter stone and scatter glass in heaps beneath your feet, along the path you trod. You shut your eyes; it passed before you woke I told you it had left a ribbon track- the scent of water in an earthen pitch, and lizards leaping like a joyful king. But still you watched the crackling, heavy orb, like insects passed too soon for storm or grace an eye cast downwards – fractured morning ice of hurricane and tempest’s broken tide.