In the Service of my Lord

Take pity on one who has worn himself out in your service, lord.

Except, as you know well, desire takes pity on no one.

Battening upon the throat of this one, and sucking, sucking till my teeth ache. And even as I suck, my eyes wander to that one's throat.

No. I'm afraid you don't know the half of it. I was born among such creatures. Believe me, I know them better than you. You can see them in great sobbing clusters, frantically drinking as the fluid is drained from their bodies. These are not nice creatures. Don't take one home.

A quiet spacious well-scrubbed kitchen, with nothing new in it. That's a good starting place. They will find it hard to enter such a place. Well-tended gardens make them nervous and uncomfortable. So do mended clothes and careful workmanship They gather in the waste spaces, the untended lots. They like places where new, untried goods are jumbled up with discarded things. They come eagerly to where promises are broken. Persistent they may be, but they are not intelligent. Lure them somewhere once, and depend upon it, they'll come back again and again.

But don't mistake their places for hell. There's affection there, too, in all its forms. Recognized, though it is, as a luxury that no one can really afford. Still they indulge in it. They indulge in most things.

A haze of cigarette smoke, a pale watery morning, and a distant coughing that won't stop. Morning is a hard time for these creatures. They blink painfully, and dig their way unsteadily under piles of loose rubbish. Astonished, abashed, indignant and frightened by the coming of the sun.