I can make fire breath. I learned it as a lad. My master told me I had prowess no one ever had!nnI could conduct the light… I’d look away to her… She’d match my spit with spite; I don’t know what her reasons were.nnI fell in love with her. My tongue is purple-black. I lit a bluish rose… She carved a curse into my back!nnI dance when beauty’s near. I hop to taunts and jeers. I sought out stony glens… Lovely ladies don’t come here.nnI paint the rock with flame. I burn and bruise my feet. I spit, I’m naked, ever-hungry, I forget to eat.nnI stamp out flowers and I fill my ears with mud. (That way the birdsong will not stir and agitate my blood.)nnI stare at ugly things. I suffer cuts and stings. It’s been a happy, hopless, curseless ten-years hermitting!nnBut then I smell the air and see her shrivelled there… And though my blood begins to jump and boil, I don’t despair.nnThe curse is breathing flames that I could never name. I ask her, shaking, quaking, why the bloody hell she came!nnShe does not answer me. Her eyes are withering! The wind begins to bend her… Now my muscles start to sing!nnI clasp her desperately, and we jump fifty feet! Am I the very toad that used to hop along her street?nnI fell in love with her. My tongue is purple-black. I light a bluish rose and heap the flames upon our backs…n