High howled the wind, the Ocean hurled
 His mass of crested jet uncurled
 Against the sea-wall and the tower
 Where Dahud and her paramour
 In shuttered silence , silky white
 Lay side by side the live-long night
 Confusedly in Dahud's arm
 He felt presentiment of harm
 Raising his ears from her white skin
 And heart's noise , to the people's din
 And beyond them , the growling roar
 Of angry Ocean at the door.
 "Go to the window," then said she,
 "Tell me the movement of the sea.
 His colour and his strategy."
 "Lady, his waves are green as glass,
 The sky is jet , the small skiffs pass.
 From gulf to gulf like flying things
 Soaked through, sucked down, with sodden wings."
 "Then come to me and my embrace --
 I will press kisses on thy face
 Whose heat and sharpness shall occlude
 The murmuring of the multitude,
 The rumble of the waters rude.
 The murmuring of the multitude."
 "Go to the window, tell to me
 The height and movement of the sea
 His colour and his strategy."
 "Lady, his wave are black and boil,
 Like stinking pitch, like raging oil,
 He mounts and mounts, his million jaws
 Snatch at the tower with open maws."
 "No one, no myriad, open, high,
 Lady I cannot see the sky.
 The stars are out, the waters race,
 The very tower sways and strains."
 He laughs with rage, flings his fist down,
 "Now rise up, lady, or we drown."
 Christabel LaMotte, The City of Is
 Possession, A S Byatt