The door never did fit, even the curtain didn't muffle stone-close echoes, starkly lit or the neighbouring hound's restless scuffle. It's impotent baying at every arrival, and human harshness through the partition wall pierced, distorted, my privacy's survival, a creeping coldness was ever near the hall. Panting friends would sympathy-grin grinning back, I'd doggedly invite them in.next poem