Long exposures

The clouds are everywhere; it is like a rippled, pockmarked sky. Bright teeth, dark eyes. In sheets the rain comes and goes, the umbrellas fly about, the red and golden ring breathes some fog on the glass. I dream of a beautiful shy girl with lipstick, in a demure drawing room, waiting for her lover to come (he's supposed to be in a car), and the wet afternoon dulling itself into a gilded evening. With what? Maybe a comfortable dinner on his knees, a tight sleep in his arms. I laugh to myself, and drive further on: there is only paddy and paddy around me, and there is this thin long road, going up into the sea. It feels that all are waiting for me, everybody is silent so I can come up, and then they burst up into applause, into drums and cymbals. I think of her rainwashed hair and dream of a tea shop: a German tourist lands up there, and a bit awed, a bit afraid, a bit adventurous, she asks for cigarettes. The shopkeeper stares, there is only one another dog there, who sleeps there and prowls there; the woman brings up the warmth in her, makes her arms close together, and an impression registers in her brain. She would remember the tea shop on this rainy evening all her life. There is something about it she didn't know about life: the simplicity of it all, the beauty in it. The cigarette glows like embers. And now the wipers go a little awry, and I have to reach out my hands, and swear to myself. All will be flooded soon, and I must be on my way, on my way. I reach her: like wind, she touches you and yet is not yours; like the sea, she comes again and again, but yet keeps a soul to herself, her own silences and sounds. I can only kiss her, and she can only kiss me; we may only love.