The Poets' Wives by David Park

punishment on a people who have turned their faces away as they do from all those who are prophets. The city’s dogs are barking and whimpering and those children still at play in the street are frozen into stillness and some are crying with fear.
    Seemingly almost motionless at first then a ball of fire tinted with blue and red so intense that it almost burns the eyes as it moves across the night sky. And its brightness makes shadows of us all as in its wake trails a great flaring tail of orange flame that breaks into smaller pieces to a rumble of thunder. And when it is gone people are left confused and silent for a few moments before they burst into animated argument about what they have seen. And some of them call to Mr Blake to explain but he simply smiles at them and says over and over again, ‘The stars throw down their spears,’ and no matter how hard they press him he answers nothing else. Then when we return to our home he dances a little jig of joy and takes both my hands and makes me dance with him to some music that only he can hear and I try to follow the rhythm of his steps until eventually he collapses on his chair.
    ‘You’re right, Kate, surely it is a sign,’ he almost shouts and his eyes burn bright and he tells me of all his ideas and plans for another new work that he must undertake and he is filled to the brim with excitement and some of his words I follow and some are lost to me but I believe all of them have the deepest meaning. And that night he labours through all the hours as if the Holy Spirit is upon him and I sit by his side and watch what energy and passion shape everything he does and he speaks little but sometimes stops and with his inky hands takes mine in his and then raises them to his lips. And in the morning when he is spent I bring him drink and bread and when he lays his head down in slumber on the engraving table I make him stand and then lead him to the bedroom where I undress him and as a mother with a child help him into his nightshirt and then leave him to sleep, going about the house for many hours on tiptoe so as not to disturb him. Then after a while I hear his voice call my name and when I enter he beckons me to him and it is the richest and most wondrous of times and his words that whisper about fire flowing through the sky and distant stars hang like pearls from my ears and when he tells me I am his heart’s desire he burns so bright that I am almost frightened I shall be consumed by the flames.
    In the days that follow he is tender but quiet and I do not know what spins inside his head but then in time he grows restless and wanders about the house and sometimes he is in conversation with those I cannot see. And once he gets into a fight in the street with a man who is beating a horse and claiming his ownership allows him to do whatever is his wish and for a moment I think that William will tear the stick from his hand and turn it on the man. I have to drag him away and then everything that the city has to offer seems destined to anger him, such as when we pass a house that has songbirds held in cages attached to its outside walls. And on Blackfriars Road he rails against Albion Mill and exclaims in a loud voice that all can hear that man is not a machine. As we walk he speaks of Christ going into the temple and clearing out the moneylenders and I fear he will do some violence to anyone who runs counter to what presses so hard upon him. I try to calm him but it feels as if the earlier joy at what we witnessed in the sky has dissipated and in its place has slipped an aching dissatisfaction with everything the world has to offer. It is then that I fear his dark star will be what shines most brightly in his firmament and he asks me constantly to be with him, either when he sits at his table but where he does little work, or when he walks the city at all hours of the day and night. And there is a restlessness that will not give him respite except when I read the Bible to