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though pressed to his ear:
Drain the sacrament of choice
. Gladys began to sing, pop garbage composed by some teenager, much heard on radio discprogrammes. She sang loudly. Excited, Enderby cried, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake shut up!’ Gladys was indignant. ‘Who the bloody hell do you think you’re telling to shut up?’ she called across, with menace. ‘I’m trying to write a poem,’ said Enderby. ‘This,’ said someone, ‘is supposed to be a respectable pub.’ Enderby downed his whisky and left.
    Walking home quickly he tried to call back the rhythm, but it had gone. The fragments ceased to be live limbs of some mystical body that promised to reveal itself wholly. Dead as the hare, meaningless onomatopoeia; a silly jingle:
widow, shadow, meadow
. The big rhythms of the nearing tide, the winter sea-wind, the melancholy gulls. A gust shattered and dispersed the emerging form of the poem. Oh, well. Of the million poems that beckoned, like coquettish girls, from the bushes, how very few could be caught!
    Enderby stripped the hare of its bloody paper as he approached 81 Fitzherbert Avenue. There was a public litter basket attached to a lamp-post almost in front of the front-steps. He threw the crumpled mess of news, blood, inchoate poetry in, and got out his key. A tidy town, this. Must not let our standards relax even though there are no holiday visitors. He entered the kitchen and began to skin the hare. It would give him, he thought, stewed with carrots, potatoes and onions, seasoned with pepper and celery salt, the remains of the Christmas red wine poured in before serving, enough meals for nearly a week. He slapped the viscera on to a saucer, cut up the carcass, and then turned on the kitchen tap. Hangman’s hands, he thought, looking at them. Soaked in blood up to the elbows. He tried out a murderer’s leer, holding the sacrificial knife, imagining a mirror above the kitchen sink.
    The water flowing from the faucet cast a faint shadow, a still shadow, on the splashboard. The line came, a refrain:
The running tap casts a static shadow
. That was it, he recognized, his excitement mounting again. The widow, the meadow. A whole stanza blurted itself out:
     
‘Act! Act!’ The ducks give voice.
‘Enjoy the widow in the meadow.
Drain the sacrament of choice.
The running tap casts a static shadow.’
     
    To hell with the meaning. Where the hell were those other birds? What were they? The cuckoo? The sea-gull? What was the name of that cross-eyed lesbian bitch in the Freemason’s? Knife in hand, steeped in blood to the elbows, he dashed out of his flat, out of the house, to the rubbish-basket clamped to the lamp-post. Others had been there while he had been gutting and skinning and quartering. A Black Magic box, a Senior Service packet, banana-peel. He threw it all out madly into the gutter. He found the defiled paper which had wrapped the beast. Frantically he searched page after crumpled page. THIS MAN MAY KILL, POLICE WARN. NOW THIS BOY IS LOVED .
Most people stop Acid Stomach with Rennies
. Compulsive reading. He read: ‘The pain-causing acid is neutralized and you get that wonderful sensation that tells you the pain is beginning to go. The antacid ingredients reach your stomach gradually and gently – drip by drip …’
    ‘What’s this? What’s going on?’ asked an official voice.
    ‘Eh?’ It was the law, inevitably. ‘I’m looking for these blasted birds,’ said Enderby, rummaging again. ‘Ah, thank God. Here they are. Prudence, pigeons. Rooks, caution. It’s as good as written. Here.’ He thrust the extended sheets into the policeman’s arms.
    ‘Not so fast,’ said the policeman. He was a young man, apple-ruddy from the rural hinterland, very tall. ‘What’s this knife for, where did all that blood come from?’
    ‘I’ve been murdering my stepmother,’ said Enderby, absorbed in composition.
Prudence, prudence, the pigeons call
. He ran into the house. The woman from upstairs was just