Julian watched, cannily; his dog days were nearly done. His own mind was emerging from behind dogmind and he would soon resume himself, and Morgan, true to his disposition knew what to do.

It's Morgan for me, Julian mused. I never dug in his aunty bit.

It was awkward nevertheless, perhaps because Julian did have a sense of what was going on. They were being dressed in loose fitting clothes, jeans, loafers, big t-shirts, hanging sports jackets, taken to the limousine in wheel chairs -- Robertson with actual restraints upon his wrists and ankles -- and taken from the limousine to Julian's plane, which Morgan had gotten flown over to take them home.

Parker stood in the doorway, at the top of the steps as they were wheeled up to the cabin. His handsome face and muscular figure against the sky, the keenness in his devotion and obedience -- of colossal cliché proportions -- stare out from the canvass of this story into each reader's eyes and begin to seduce because of the proud and strong subservience he embodies.

But in Parker, too, devotion and obedience had wrought sharpness of mind, of that aspect of mind which is capable of sympathetic perception; that knows the feelings and needs of another as his own. He was the master servant, the servant who serves by properly imagining his master's life.

Julian knew him immediately and spoke the English words of a man. Help me up, Parker. Enough of this. It's very good to see you.

Thank you, Sir. It is very good to see you, Sir, and Mr. Robertson, he said, bowing to Robertson, who as yet was entirely dog.

They landed in New York. Julian focused through the window as Kennedy's terminals began turning around outside as the plane taxied to its halt.

Now Parker put his big paw upon Robertson's chest, pressing the diamond piercing in his nipple, and the boy felt an ease he had no memory of and began falling, falling into himself. And he continued to sleep.

Julian walked to the limousine. Parker pushed Robertson in his wheel chair.

Indignant Spenser scolded Julian for one more time putting himself in danger and putting her at risk of forfeiting her vow -- through no fault of her own, she was forced to add -- made to his dying mother that she would make sure to see that no harm would come to him, but with his being as reckless as he was, how could she be a woman of her word?

Julian simply kissed her, and she fell crying into his arms.

And what do we do with him? she pointed, nearly all her passion spent, at Robertson, sleeping in his wheel chair.

Well, Spenser, we shall see.

Yes, Sir.

And perhaps now you might prepare some supper. Robertson will sleep through the night. No need to concern yourself with him for now.

It was a misty morning, the trees nearly bare, their barrenness only emphasized by a few tenacious leaves hanging from branches, brittle and sear with autumn's processing. They walked along a rocky path in a barren woods, Julian upright in khakis, a navy blue sweater that buttons on the shoulder and beige hiking boots; Robertson, naked on all fours, until now indifferent to the chill creeping into the air.

But the earth was becoming alien to him, the air chilly, the sense of his eyes as organs of sight and judgment was forcing itself on him and he wanted to stand up. It was Julian he saw beside him, standing, and he wanted to be standing, too.

As a traveler waking in an unfamiliar hotel room each morning during a long journey away from home faces a period of disorientation before absorbing that he is not in his own bedroom but in a chamber he had registered for at the desk the night before, exhausted after a busy and bitter day, begins to reassemble the world and his relation to it, so Robertson began to sense there was an environment that had meaning surrounding him.

Unable to coordinate action with incipient consciousness, however, he hurled himself into the woods, dashing forward and darting back to see if Julian were perceiving the strangeness of the landscape as he was, if Julian noticed anything about him, if Julian could rush into his mind and grab it before it sank behind a fog bank.

Julian crouched and extended his arms, palms open like cups and Robertson ran to him and began licking his palms and wagging his imaginary tale furiously.

It's ok boy. Back to the house, and they both ran through the autumn chill back to the library, where Magnus had lit a fire. Parker brought Julian his coffee, and Robertson stretched out before the fireplace to warm himself.

Julian took him upstairs and into his bed.

For months they continued like that, Robertson gentler than he had been, but still doggy in disposition and aware of Julian only in a space behind his mind. He was frantic to break free, but stuck within, and lingered in his doggyness even after consciousness began to break in his mind like dawn in the sky, but the dog spell overpowered him, and he had surrendered to it, for his rebellion against it came out also only in doggyness.

Physical violence was useless to free him. Beating a dog just reinforces its identity as a dog, and there was nothing Julian tried that really gave him actual hope that he was getting to Robertson or confidence that he ever would.

If anything, his efforts were having a demoralizing effect on him. He no longer felt the sexual hunger for Robertson. He did not experience the electricity of attraction or the awe at Robertson's body that kindled his urge to dominate him and possess him, which had made Robertson when he was present as himself -- not like now, debased -- thrilling.

Now duty had replaced love, and obligation, excitement. In looking after Robertson -- and he needed looking after -- like Eurydice, when Orpheus looked over his shoulder to see how it was with her, he disappeared. In his place was a humanoid dog dwelling in his body. Julian was devoid of desire for him, and he grieved at loosing Robertson and at losing his desire for him.

The winter months passed and Julian lived with a great gloom in his heart. It meant little to him that he won the National Book Award for Poetry or that a novel he had written ten years ago had just been bought by Sony Pictures for several million dollars.

Spenser and Magnus noted it, and Spenser coaxed numerous cups of a variety of herbal teas on him, and Magnus was always urging cognac upon him.

Julian maintained a Spartan regimen nevertheless, drank more tea than alcohol and drove himself, going to his office every day, answering mail, taking phone calls, sequestering himself each day between eleven and three to write. Late afternoons daily he took a vigorous hour at the gym. He'd never looked so good or felt so bad. His work was flowing with a brilliant vigor.

In May, "After the End" appeared in The New Yorker:

1.

Again

That time

Again

The rain

A long extended

Empty

Avenue.

Our eyes

Met and turned away.

The evening

Smelled like evening. The

Rose branch heavy with

Blossoms hung down.

Still your eyes haunt me.

I stare into them

Although they are not here.

2.

At the intersection

of eternity and

the temporal

I meet your eyes

shining brown

and long to touch

the nipples on your chest

3.

I would have you submissive as flowers,

Overwhelmed by profusions,

Adorned with garlands,

like Bacchus or

Adonis,

The flesh of flowers:

the texture of your skin.

I would take you to Florence and put you among the marbles

Michelangelo's David or the Dying Captive

You would not be out-shown by these perfect

precursors.

Glow in the ancient night, fit rival to those marvels.

You would know your submission

By a ring round your cock

A silver band encircling your love

A leather bracelet round your wrist

My breath the air inside your breast

I would fix your eyes upon a flame until they became smoky

Melted and turned so deep within that you became a flame yourself

And heated me upon your breast when winter snows oppressed my soul.

4.

Haunted by the phantoms of a life I did not lead

Supine inside my heart, I watch my past lives bleed.

Within your heart is everything I need

My angel, my life, my new heart's new creed.

5.

The breeze of my breath

Blows through the hollow of your neck

The sound of my words

Becomes the resonance of your mind

The meaning I give

Is the one that remains

6

The Sirens are singing again

Let your eyes gaze into the distance

And hear the voices of the Sirens

As their currents electrify and terrify

Nevertheless not threats

This time but possibilities

If you can take them for your own.

7.

My mistress the moon

is rising above the roofs of Paris

It is the beginning of August

She is a ghost of yellow silver

A distant frigid lover

She draws me to follow her

with no reward but the glimpse of her gaze

indifferent gaze

a pallid wash of bronze

present and with no significance

8.

The world exists

To be turned

Into words

He comes

A ghost of himself

Hungry

Captive

How distinguish between

I love you

I am hungry

I want to sleep by myself

Tonight

I turn the pages in the book

Unable to distinguish

The world in the words

From the world without.

He left his office and walked on Fifth Avenue through the crowd of pedestrians, shoppers, office workers just getting out, random souls wandering on the streets waiting for something to do. The Christmas tree blazed at Rockefeller Center. It was all as homey as a Frank Capra picture.

Except he felt bitterly the underlying falseness of everything. And it disgusted him. There was no one in the crowd that he wished to go home with, whom he wanted to be instead of himself. He was lost among his fellows, not part of them. He could not understand what motivated them to keep on living except inertia.

They were slavish, and their slavishness consisted in their being obedient to circumstances and resigned to the fact that they were obedient. There was nothing rebellious about them. The worst mark of their defeat was that their imaginations had been…castrated … perverted, rendered impotent. Imagination for them meant impossible erotic daydreams rather than the workshop of improvement, the instrument that brings bettering change into the world.

And then he realized what he had to do: turn grief at lost love back into love.

And if I can't do that, he said out loud to himself, I am no poet no matter how many verses I have published.

But no one noticed because the store windows were blazing and the people on the street stood in front of them crowd-deep, gazing.

A late February snow covered Manhattan the morning they flew out of Kennedy for Guadeloupe. They landed half a day later in the hot sunshine.

The pale sable of the soft beach stretched out beneath the villa. Julian looked out at the infinite horizon: the line which indicates the separation of the sea and the sky but also marks the place where they touch. Townsend lay at his feet on the deck, panting in the hot sun.

Julian squatted beside him. He took his friend by the back of the neck and moved his own face up close and looked the man who thought he was a dog directly in the eyes. With his other hand he took hold of Robertson's cock and held him fast. Robertson's deep blue eyes were radiant with the possibility that things that had become unspeakable might once more be heard. His breathing became calm and regular. He felt Julian's presence inside him. That very sensitivity conveyed a corresponding sensation to Julian and vivified his loins. He saw Robertson again after so long. He had not realized that one aspect of his own enchantment had clung to him even as he thought he had emerged from it complete and all himself. He had continued to see Robertson as a dog. He continued to see him as he had when he too had been a dog with him in Farrington's compound.

Now their gazes met again as they had earlier and became one dominant gaze that had them both enthralled. It was a mutual hypnosis. They were drawn together each by a power that captured him, emanating from the other.

The beach stretched out on the left and gently swerved. On the right it came to a cliff and made an almost ninety degree turn. The sun burned through the blue sky; the sand was red with heat. Solitary souls or small bands and couples were scattered random on its stretch.

Julian stood looking at Robertson, who was standing with the joy of having mastered a skill. He was not naked anymore but wore a black thong. His nipple diamond glittered in the sun. The intricate silver chain around his neck was not a dog collar. His muscular torso rippled with allure.

Julian, he said, I want you to be my master, but not as a dog. Will you have me as your man?

Julian said yes, he would, yes.

But first a swim, he said laughing.

And he ran towards the jeweled sea, the turquoise Caribbean, like a demi-god returning to the blue Aegean.

Robertson ran after him and grabbed him at the water's edge. Clutched in each other's embrace they fell upon the velvet sand at the water's edge. The tide ran out and left them in its ebb momentarily upon the wet sand, until it flooded over them again. They breathed one breath as they devoured each other with welcome, and their kisses exploded like the ocean foaming round them.

I love the power of your cock, Robertson gasped grabbing his master's rod. O Julian, take me like a man again, for I am only a man if I am yours.

There then upon the sand with Poseidon's fierce and mighty daughter dancing blessings all around them, they looked into each other's eyes. Julian stretched like the arc of a bow taut and trembling shot his quivers into Robertson. Robertson cried in ecstasy and swooned to feel deep within the wounds that heal.